Making the Scene in the Garden State: Popular Music in New Jersey from Edison to Springsteen and Beyond 9780813574691

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M AKING THE SCENE IN THE GARDEN STATE

M AKING THE SCENE IN THE GARDEN STATE Popu­lar ­Music in New Jersey from Edison to Springsteen and Beyond

de wa r ­m ac leod

rutger s un i v er sit y p r ess New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: M ­ acLeod, Dewar, 1962—­author. Title: Making the scene in the Garden State: popu­lar m ­ usic in New Jersey from Edison to Springsteen and beyond / Dewar ­MacLeod. Description: New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019020423 | ISBN 9780813574660 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Popu­lar ­music—­New Jersey—­History and criticism. | Sound recording industry—­New Jersey—­History. Classification: LCC ML3477.7.N55 M3 2020 | DDC 781.6409749—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2019020423 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2020 by Dewar ­MacLeod All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­ic­ a

For Sinéad and Rory

CONTENTS



Introduction: Making Scenes

1

1

Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio

13

2

The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home

36

3

Jazz at the Cliffside: The Studios of Rudy Van Gelder

59

4

Transylvania Bandstand and Rockin’ with the Cool Ghoul

81

5

The Upstage Club and the Asbury Park Scene

93

6

“Drums Along the Hudson”: The Hoboken Sound

112



Conclusion: Making the Scene in the Twenty-­First ­Century

131

Acknowl­edgments 139 Notes 141 Index 169

vii

M AKING THE SCENE IN THE GARDEN STATE

INTRODUCTION Making Scenes

Beyond its reputations as the suburban outpost to Manhattan, the industrial wasteland, the barren swamps and pinelands where gangsters dump their victims, propagator of the tacky and déclassé, pathway between far more in­ter­est­ing locales, New Jersey has been home to vital and exciting scenes of musical production and enjoyment. New Jersey deserves its own musical history. The state has been home not simply to musicians who w ­ ere born t­ here, but also to t­ hose who went off to seek fame in the bright lights of the big city. The state has fostered and grown local scenes of musical and historical import. Certainly, its location on the outskirts of major cities at the northern and southern ends has factored into New Jersey’s influence. But this book ­will explore the homegrown and nurtured musical production and consumption in New Jersey. The book ­will fill in the historical rec­ord by including some vibrant and impor­tant musical moments that have not received due attention. But I am interested in even more than claiming historical space for ­these musical productions as worthy of inclusion in some sort of musical hall of fame—my interest lies in the social history of the ways in which p­ eople produce and consume m ­ usic. Accordingly, the organ­izing conceit of this book is the concept of scenes. I use the term “scene” to discuss a variety of types of historical groupings of ­people around ­music, “the contexts in which clusters of producers, musicians, and fans collectively share their common musical tastes and collectively distinguish themselves from o­ thers.”1 Over the past few de­cades, scholars 1

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have explored “the production, per­for­mance, and reception of popu­lar ­music. Work in the scenes perspective focuses on situations where performers, support facilities, and fans come together to collectively create ­music for their own enjoyment.”2 The term itself is malleable, even slippery, used as it is by participants, journalists, and scholars, often in very dif­fer­ent ways. My research for this book has come from distinctly dif­fer­ent kinds of sources, depending on the type of scene I was researching. Sometimes the major ­factors involve the technology and business aspects of making ­music. Other scenes are fraught with contestation over meaning and deeply invested in signification, identity, and community. Scenes are places where p­ eople come together to create a new experience of ­music that cannot be found elsewhere, and the ultimate product is a piece of m ­ usic that reaches beyond the space. The list of terms for thinking about scenes is extensive: ­music worlds, subcultures, networks, communities, fan communities, taste communities, youth culture, tribes, and neotribes. And the ways of thinking about scenes are even more vast and varied. They involve the examination of creativity, aesthetics, infrastructure, communications, commerce, geography, identity, fields and discourses, mass culture, and so on. “­Music,” John Blacking writes, “is essentially about aesthetic experiences and the creative expression of individual ­human beings in community, about the sharing of feelings and ideas.”3 The interaction between aesthetics, creative expression, identity, community, feelings, and ideas forms the basis for my explorations of scenes. Scholarship on scenes descends most directly from work on subcultures and youth culture in the 1970s, especially from the so-­called Birmingham School at the Centre for Con­temporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), which explored how p­ eople came together to create identities and communities in opposition to and in dialogue with the mass culture of cap­i­tal­ist society, combining ethnography, sociology, structuralist and post-­structuralist literary theory to create the new field of cultural studies.4 The work coming out of the Birmingham School was extremely influential and inspired a generation ­ ngland, of scholars in cultural studies, especially in the United States and E to undertake theoretically infused, deep, microso­cio­log­i­cal, ethnographic examinations of local communities within the contexts of class, race, gender, and other structural determinants of identity. By the 1990s, “post-­subcultures” scholars had begun to criticize subculture as too static and fixed, arguing that individual identities are more constructed

Introduction 3

and fluid, and cultural groups are better seen as fluid entities built around lifestyles, rather than fixed groups that represent social class.5 The Birmingham School was derided for a romanticized vision of “working-­class youth subcultures ‘heroically’ resisting subordination through ‘semiotic guerrilla warfare’ ” in ­favor of a “more pragmatic approach” reflecting a belief that “the potential for style itself to resist appears largely lost.”6 Scholars turned away from subcultures to “channels” or “subchannels,” “temporary substream networks,” “neotribes,” and “clubcultures”—­less ambitious terms that reflect a “post-­heroic” vision that makes more ­limited claims about identity and community rather than social transformation or revolution.7 Scenes can be united across space through shared tastes and social and economic networks, allowing members to define themselves through identification and differentiation. Recently scholars have embraced and expanded the concept of scene to capture myriad types of cultural activity and social experiences, in seeking to find “a way of talking about the roles of place, participation and circulation in the production of popu­lar ­music . . . ​[and] the field of social relations in which ­music circulated.”8 A “scenes perspective” emerged within cultural studies to explore the ways in which “­doing scene” is “both extraordinarily creative and an ordinary, practical accomplishment.”9 Building on the pioneering theorizing of ­Will Straw, Barry Shank, and ­others in the 1990s, l­ ater scholars have called for “scene thinking,” arguing that “naming a group or cluster of activity a scene says something about how ­these concrete practices and spaces disclose the social’s inherent relationality.”10 Looking at scenes allows us to explore both the creative and the quotidian, the ways in which meaning and identity are formed, and the social worlds, both local and global, in which they take place.11 Scenes “provide systems of identification and connection, while si­mul­ta­neously inviting acts of novelty, invention and innovation. Scenes are set within the fabric of everyday life but also function as an ­imagined alternative to the ordinary, work-­a-­day world.”12 Although the concept of scene might be “ambiguous” or even “downright confusing,” scene thinking defines not a t­ hing, but a perspective, a way of looking at the relationships between individuals and institutions in a given setting.13 The concept of scene, b­ ecause of its attention to space, is more flexible than subculture or fandom.14 A scene has a degree of self-­consciousness about collective identity; it pulls p­ eople and ideas together in spaces that ­create coherence; ­people in the scene actively participate in types of work and productivity; a scene is a place for working out rules, identities,

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tastes,  and politics both internally and vis-­à-­vis the outside world; a scene registers transformation and historical memory, change and continuity; the scene mediates between the personal and the social, the private and the public, turning creativity into cultural activity, and cultural activity into social engagement.15 The concept of scenes is necessarily flexible and expansive ­because the range of activities that takes place is so wide, and all ­those actors and acts must be examined by their very connections.

Why ­Music? Scenes can gather around any group of ­people or activity, but so often ­music provides the centerpiece. So, the question needs to be asked: Why m ­ usic? ­Music ­matters ­because “musical participation and experience are valuable for the pro­cesses of personal and social integration that make us w ­ hole.”16 Anthropologists and phi­los­o­phers have explored how “the arts are essential to ­human survival ­because they serve the function of integrating dif­fer­ent parts of the self and integrating individuals with each other and their environment.”17 Experiencing ­music, in par­tic­u­lar, brings to the foreground “the crucial interplay between the Pos­si­ble and the A ­ ctual.”18 It is through ­music that we experience both personal ideals and relationships as well as flow or even the total erasure of self and merging with o­ thers. ­Music is deeply emotional and personal, and at the same time social, collective, spontaneous, and public. We sing lullabies to babies, dance in discotheques, and bask in symphonic sounds in the concert hall.19 Simon Frith, perhaps our greatest pop m ­ usic sociologist, argues for evaluating popu­lar ­music and culture aesthetically, not just socially. “The question we should be asking,” he writes, “is not what does popu­lar m ­ usic reveal about ‘the ­people’ but how does it construct them.”20 But pop ­music does its work in social situations. ­People create their sense of identity through their musical choices, choosing social groups and gathering together in audiences of collective identity. And they navigate the divide between private and public through song. Love songs, for example, Frith writes, “give shape and voice to emotions that other­wise cannot be expressed without embarrassment or incoherence. . . . ​­These songs do not replace our conversations—­pop singers do not do our courting for us—­but they make our feelings seem richer and more convincing than we can make them appear in our own words, even

Introduction 5

to ourselves.”21 We attach ourselves to singers b­ ecause they say what we would say if we had the ability: “It is as if we get to know ourselves via the m ­ usic.”22 From ­there, we, as fans, come to “possess” the ­music; “we make it part of our own identity and build it into our sense of ourselves.”23 Through this pro­ cess, we move from personal taste to social identity through our connection to ­music. Producing and enjoying m ­ usic, therefore, are always social acts, even when we are alone. We are “acting in concert” and participating in community.24 A musical community provides “a sense of belonging and shared affiliation around notions of class, ethnicity, style, and taste expressed through ­music and other creative cultural expressions.”25 Musical communities develop from local face-­to-­face interactions over time, and they develop ideological, affective, and ­imagined dimensions, including cultural memory and a shared sense of solidarity. But, like all communities, they can be fragmentary, ad hoc, and fleeting.26 ­These musical communities are situated within global and transnational networks “at the intersection of local and mass consumption.”27 Communities can even share culture across time and space, and what appear to be “highly separate, distinctive, and clearly bonded local scenes” can make up “a singular and relatively coherent movement whose translocal connections [are] of greater significance than its local differences.”28 The connections through identities, tastes, travel, technology, commerce, and media serve to create “a complex translocal network of ‘concrete’ connections which [function] to construct and support the strength of subjective identity and the consistent and distinctive tastes.”29 Starting in the 1950s, in his nuanced ethnographic work on jazz and dance communities, Howard Becker introduced the dimensions of place and space into the examination of musical worlds. Becker defined a place not only as physical space but also by its social definitions, the shared expectations and activities, and the larger social and economic contexts that define the opportunities and limits to activity. Becker provided deep and rich work on the gigging economy, the everydayness of the ways jazz musicians worked and played, and one of the key ele­ments was place: “Most of the time we played what the ‘place’—­the combination of physical space and social and financial arrangements—­made pos­si­ble.”30 As a musician himself, he was highly attuned to the fact that often the most impor­tant ­factor in defining the art of jazz was not esoteric, but economic (which was itself po­liti­cal, social, highly personal, and local).

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M a king the Sc ene in the G a rden State

Subcultural or scene spaces are impor­tant as places for “unconventional social groups” to enact their “way of life” beyond simply recreation.31 For some scenes, t­ hose spaces exist beyond the club, in recording studios, and also in apartments, bars, squats, and DIY (do it yourself) venues. Jazz, for example, cannot be understood without attention to spatial practices, both in terms of the particularities of space and po­liti­cal economy in locales (the cities of New Orleans, New York, Memphis, Chicago, e­ tc.) and institutions (clubs, studios, after-­hours venues, e­ tc.).32 The scene is also historical, as spaces and places change, whereas participants create and harbor memories and newcomers continually renew and transform the scene. M ­ usic is often created out of the mainstream, in the counter-­public sphere as well as “disrespectable” and “impure spaces.”33 Th ­ ese liminal spaces are not easily classified or policed ­because they exist on the margins, in the interstices.34 In t­ hese marginal and “in-­between” spaces, the hierarchical social bound­aries are challenged, and individuals and groups create new m ­ usics, but also new selves, new collaborations, and ways of thinking about and ordering society.35 The momentary disruptions provided by this “carnivalistic environment” threaten to break down barriers and hierarchies, with all the attendant anx­i­eties and opportunities that brings.36 Some scholars have ­adopted the term musicking to describe the varied ­ usic scene, such as compospractices that make up the social ele­ments of a m ing, creating, rehearsing, performing, listening, dancing, and so forth. The scene includes the ticket-­takers, bouncers, bartenders, sound technicians, and roadies, as well as the musicians and fans.37 The pro­cess of musicking allows for the genius of inspiration and creativity, but also accounts for an array of individuals, both professional and amateur, partaking in writing, composing, playing, dancing, singing, listening, producing, and so on—­many of them invisible to outsiders as “the unseen scene.”38 Situated within the sym­ usic then takes biotic and synergistic aspects of social relationships, the m on ­meaning in the moments of exchange between musician and listener, moments that can be extremely intense and intimate, even transcendent and spiritual.39 Improvisation, for example, emerges from the scene, linking the local (liberatory and exploratory) within global musical and social contexts.40 Set within the community of musicians, improvisation resists the co-­optation of mass culture and gives form to the basic impulses at the heart of scenes, connecting individual expression and virtuosity to community, with deep his-

Introduction 7

torical roots, as a kind of “empathic communication across time.”41 The ­music gives voice to alternatives, possibilities, and utopian impulses that emerge in daily life and social relations within the scene. We need to see scene participants as historical actors, often articulate and quite aware of their own concepts, innovations, tropes, and lexicons. And we should see them both within their ­music spaces and the larger social and spatial environments.42 Musical scenes are built on the intellectual and creative l­abor of writers, artists, performers, producers, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs, as well as fans, and that creativity is what brings every­one out and together.43 All art is produced within social contexts, so even to examine an individual text is to explicate the world from which it came. As Becker writes, “Art worlds rather than artists make art.”44 Being a part of a scene is sometimes a m ­ atter of work, its conditions and pro­cesses, which are routine as well as exciting.45 Musicians work within a variety of settings, their ­careers dependent on many variables, individuals, and institutions. ­People and institutions other than musicians also contribute to the formation of the scene. Influenced by the theoretical work of Michel DeCerteau, scholars studied fandom as “automatically more than the mere act of being a fan of something; it was a collective strategy, a communal effort to form interpretive communities that in their subcultural cohesion evaded the ­preferred and intended meanings of the ‘power bloc’ presented by popu­lar media.”46 As with the study of subcultures, an initial wave of study of fandom as oppositional was supplemented by scholarship that explored the internal dynamics and hierarchies of fan communities and their links to larger social and cultural relations. Following Bourdieu’s notion of “cultural capital” in the sociology of consumption, this perspective is less likely to see fan communities as sites of autonomy, emancipation, re­sis­tance, and subversion than as arenas for working out relations with peers, the larger world, and everyday life.47 As recent scholars of fandom explain, “Studying fan audiences allows us to explore some of the key mechanisms through which we interact with the mediated world at the heart of our social, po­liti­cal, and cultural realities and identities. Perhaps the most impor­tant contribution of con­temporary research into fan audiences thus lies in furthering our understanding of how we form emotional bonds with ourselves and ­others in a modern, mediated world.”48

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Scholars are extending the concept to explore a range of social phenomena that do not fit the traditional subculture definition, so that “rather than drawing a hard line between scenes and nonscenes it may be more appropriate to say that groups exhibit varying degrees of ‘sceneness.’ ”49 Fans of Kate Bush, for example, ­were relatively “invisible” and “unspectacular,” even discrete in their fandom, but they still exhibited “a strong degree of shared feelings . . . ​and a quest for distinction” that united them despite multiple obstacles.50 The work on fans takes us back to the individual relationship to ­music. In Performing Rites: On the Value of Popu­lar ­Music—­the very title signaling his perspective—­Simon Frith explores the folk worlds and folk rituals of popu­ lar ­music communities, the ways that ­music connects to re­sis­tance, escape, reconciliation, and transformation.51 For Frith, the act of “ ‘ listening’ itself is a per­for­mance: to understand how musical plea­sure, meaning, and evaluation work, we have to understand how, as listeners, we perform the ­music for ourselves.”52 Per­for­mance is social and communicative; it requires an audience that is always interpretive, conveying and making meaning.53 “­Music’s enveloping effect” captures both the performer and the audience.54 That special feeling that comes from ­music makes it seem that the specialness derives from the ­music itself; but the experience of ­music—­even the ­ usic—is social.55 We just do not necessarily feel it solitary experience of m as such. We feel it as personal and sensual, in our bodies, in the flow, as “plea­ sure in motion.”56 We form bonds with ­others, merge with them, even on the dance floor, in the concert hall, even alone in our bedrooms, through our emotional identification with ­music in specific settings and situations.57 When we listen to m ­ usic, we engage in the immediate experience, but also in the reflective, abstract act of judging, so that we find our way in the world, both in the moment and in the larger scheme of ­things.58 Through the per­ for­mance of m ­ usic, at least for the time being, ­things make sense, ethically, sensually, emotionally, and socially.59 ­Music both takes us out of ourselves and our boring lives into ­imagined worlds and makes us who we are “through the experiences it offers of the body, time, and sociability, experiences which ­ usic inteenable us to place ourselves in imaginative cultural narratives.”60 M grates our aesthetics and ethics. “Identity is necessarily a ­matter of ritual: it describes one’s place in a dramatized pattern of relationships—­one can never ­really express oneself ‘autonomously,’ ” Frith writes. “Self-­identity is cultural identity.”61

Introduction 9

­Music shapes our identity, ­music makes us feel ­human, ­music brings us together. But ­music can also alienate and divide us; it can also “feed disaffection and create spaces of alterity.”62 Think of the longing the perfect love song evokes. Think of the tribal conflicts between dif­fer­ent scenes. But even within a scene, the identification with m ­ usic is ultimately based on a shared sense of difference. Barry Shank, one of the pioneering theorists and historians of scenes, has explored musical beauty as a psychological and po­liti­cal phenomenon, charting how the deeply personal experience of engaging with ­music connects to social and po­liti­cal understandings in complex ways. He focuses on how “the act of musical listening enables us to confront complex and mobile structures of impermanent relationships—­the sonic interweaving of tones and beats, upper harmonics, and contrasting timbres—­that model the experience of belonging to a community not of unity, but of difference.”63 How does that feeling of difference relate to engagement in the social and the po­liti­cal? ­Others have written about the relationships between ­music and politics and social movements, but often m ­ usic is just a vehicle to explore po­liti­cal consciousness and community. Shank wants to discover how ­music . . . ​enacts its own force, creating shared senses of the world. The experience of musical beauty confirms within its listeners the sense that this moment of listening has within it the promise of ­things being right, of pieces fitting together, of ­wholes emerging out of so much more than the assembled riffs and rhythms. That affect is power­ful. . . . ​W hen we hear the exquisite combination of right sonic relations, of auditory sensations of tension and release, of concentrated effects of sounding pressure and muscular response, we sense a commonality that feels right, that announces that this we that we are at this moment is the right we, the we that we are meant to be.64

Shank describes that perfect feeling of being at one with the m ­ usic and with fellow ­music lovers. But then he takes it away: “Of course, that is not literally true.” We do not, a­ fter all, ­really agree with our colleagues on all the impor­tant t­ hings; in fact, we might disagree severely about both what the ­music means and what the larger proj­ect we think we are involved in means. For Shank, “the coexistence of a feeling of unity and shared beauty with the knowledge that t­ hose with whom we are sharing that feeling can and do disagree with us on deeply fundamentally impor­tant ­matters” forms the basis

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for understanding that a musical community is based not on sameness, but on difference.65 His focus on beauty reminds us it is the aesthetic that reveals and constructs po­liti­cal power. A shared sense of the beautiful forms the basis for a po­liti­cal grouping, as “the experience of beauty is the recognition of the way t­ hings could be, the way t­ hings should be. The ability to produce beauty, therefore, is an index of the ability to imagine a better f­ uture.”66 “­Music provides us,” Shank writes, “with primary evidence that we are not solitary beings, that our innermost selves are interwoven with o­ thers.”67 But we listen socially, with genres as conventions that capture the historical and social aspects of listening and interpreting, so that even on the dance floor together, we feel a sense of connection and community that is dif­fer­ent for each of us.68 We are, therefore, always engaged in “a constant tracking back and forth between sounds and ­imagined ­others. We can never not do that.”69 Through our participation with ­music, we join the sonic and the social.

The Chapters Chapter 1, “Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio,” explores the first place that ­people came together to rec­ord ­music, Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison’s phonograph, in­ven­ted in 1877, dramatically altered the ways that musicians and listeners could engage with ­music. For the first time, sound was captured for all to hear for all time. The chapter explores the pro­cess of developing the technology and space for recording. Many scholars have examined the history of recording technology and some have documented the discography of the Edison cylinders, but few have looked at the experience and the social history of how the first place for ­music recording developed. Edison’s studio created a ­music world for a ­ usic. new way of engaging with making and listening to m Chapter  2, “The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home,” details Emile Berliner’s invention of the flat disc gramophone, which became the basis for the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany founded in 1901. With its globally recognized logo, Nipper, the marketing of the Victrola, and the creation of celebrity recording artists, Victor attracted musical artists as diverse as Enrico Caruso, Paul Robeson, the Car­ter ­Family, and Jimmie Rod­ gers, who flocked to Camden, New Jersey, to put their sounds on cylinders in the first de­cades of the twentieth c­ entury. At Victor’s studios in Camden,

Introduction 11

singers and musicians created a new type of recording artist. And the Victrola signaled a new type of domestic scene, as middle-­class consumers increasingly ­shaped their identities through their engagement with the commercially available products in the privacy of their own homes. Chapter 3, “Jazz at the Cliffside: The Studios of Rudy Van Gelder,” tells the story of the recording sessions in the legendary studios in Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where some of the most innovative and influential jazz of the twentieth ­century was recorded. Rudy Van Gelder’s distinctive recording style lured artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk to his studios for musical exploration and innovation for Blue Note, Prestige, and other impor­tant postwar jazz rec­ord labels. The ­music world that developed in Van Gelder’s studios was distinctive both for its sound and its ambience. Chapter 4, “Transylvanian Bandstand and Rockin’ with the Cool Ghoul,” explores the tele­v i­sion dance show Disc-­O-­Teen, hosted by Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul, and broadcast on UHF Channel 47. The show brought young ­people from Newark and the surrounding suburbs together to dance to the latest hits and to local garage bands in the 1960s. Teens gathered ­every after­ noon to dance on tele­vi­sion, and other kids raced home a­ fter school to watch the proceedings with Zacherley and their favorite dancers. The teen scene at Disc-­O-­Teen took place within a larger context of the post-­Beatlemania garage band explosion. Kids picked up guitars and played rock m ­ usic in high schools throughout New Jersey (and across Amer­i­ca). Young ­people’s identities ­were formed within the context of the local and national communities of rock culture in the 1960s. Chapter 5, “The Upstage Club and the Asbury Park Scene,” describes the thriving rock scene at the Upstage Club before Bruce Springsteen (“The Boss”) made the Asbury Park club The Stone Pony famous. From 1968 to 1971, the club hosted jam sessions by young local rockers like The Boss and Southside Johnny and a generation of up-­and-­coming musicians. In the late 1960s, the era of Woodstock, increasing intergenerational tensions over the Vietnam War along with riots in ghettos across the nation caused young ­people to embrace rock culture as a unifying ele­ment in opposition to mainstream culture. At the Upstage Club, the focus was ­music as escape from society and into artistic and individual expression. Chapter 6, “ ‘Drums Along the Hudson’: The Hoboken Sound” details the history of the scene in Hoboken in the 1980s and 1990s. The club Maxwell’s

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in Hoboken played host to thousands of local and touring punk, alternative, and indie bands from its opening in 1978 to its closing in 2013, forging an impor­tant stop on the “cultural under­ground railroad” of the indie ­music scene. Young ­people w ­ ere no longer united gen­er­a­tion­ally, but a subculture developed that unified some segments of youth through a shared taste in ­music and a shared DIY sensibility. The scene at Hoboken was central to the shaping of identity for local musicians and fans, as well as touring artists from the United States and the United Kingdom. The conclusion explores the multiple m ­ usic scenes in my hometown in northern New Jersey to demonstrate how m ­ usic worlds continue to develop and thrive.

1 • THOM AS EDISON AND THE FIRST RECORDING STUDIO

­ umans have always gathered to make and enjoy ­music, but it was H in a laboratory in New Jersey that they first came together to rec­ord ­music. When Thomas Edison spoke the words “Mary had a l­ ittle lamb” into a tube in 1877, he started the pro­cess that would transform the way in which ­people assembled to make and enjoy m ­ usic. One of the signal achievements in the creation of modernity started with an act of ­music. “I was singing to the mouth-­piece of a telephone,” Thomas Edison remembered, “when the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my fin­ger. That set me to thinking. If I could rec­ord the actions of the point and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why the ­thing would not talk.” Thus, by “merest accident,” as he set to work on improving the telephone, Edison ushered the modern age of musical recording.1 At the same time, Edison never fully grasped the cultural implications of his invention. Always the scientist and technician, he resisted seeing the ways that his innovations transformed the ways p­ eople engaged with m ­ usic and the entertainment marketplace. Although the first scene of recorded ­music makers developed in New Jersey, it did so u­ nder the guidance of a man steadfastly old-­fashioned in his tastes and approach to culture. Already a prolific and famous inventor—­dubbed the Wizard of Menlo Park that very year—­Edison was working on an improvement to the telephone when it struck him that the sound waves he was generating could be made to vibrate a diaphragm that would move a sharp object to engrave the 13

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waves onto a surface. He was not the first with this insight—­Edouard-­Leon Scott de Martinville had devised a “phonautograph” in 1857, which transcribed sound waves onto paper, and Charles Cros filed a patent remarkably similar to Edison’s at nearly the same time.2 But Edison’s original insight was not in the speaking or the recording but in the playing back. He wrote in his notebook on July 18, 1877, “­There is no doubt that I ­shall be able to store up and reproduce accurately at any f­ uture time the h­ uman voice perfectly.”3 Edison’s phonograph was “wonderfully s­ imple,” without the need for electrical transformation that the phone required.4 “I was never so taken aback in my life. Every­body was astonished. I was always afraid of ­things that worked the first time,” Edison recalled.5 It is fitting that he spoke a nursery rhyme, c­ ompleting the couplet, “Mary had a ­little lamb / Its fleece was white as snow.” The words w ­ ere not quite prose, but not quite m ­ usic ­either, fitting ­because the musical ­future of the machine was not clear right away. Edison himself foresaw, as was his nature, the business uses of the phonograph (a name, by the way, that came from a long list Edison drew up, its choice nearly random). When Edison presented his machine to the public, he listed a number of uses for it, among which m ­ usic came in at number 4. Certainly, recording technology would develop over the years for a variety of uses, but ultimately m ­ usic made the phonograph’s place in history. Imagine the strangeness of it all. For all of h­ uman history, sound had come out live, right in front of you, in sync with the objects in your vision. Or sound came from a distance, signaling danger approaching or nature at work. M ­ usic was enjoyed face-­to-­face, as ­humans gathered around the campfire or the piano in the parlor, or on the stage they w ­ ere viewing. For de­cades at least, ­people had begun imagining other possibilities. The m ­ usic theorist Moritz Hauptmann called for “musical photo­graphs.”6 Édouard-­Léon Scott de Martinville had transcribed the musical waves onto paper, “recording” sounds that would not become available ­until the invention of twenty-­first-­century technologies. Now, in this age of miraculous technological inventions, the most miraculous inventor himself could make ­music, singing into the tube and recording his voice on a piece of tinfoil that could then be made to repeat his singing, warts and all, for all to hear. ­Music was not the first purpose of the phonograph. Everywhere he went, Edison exhibited its power as a “talking” or “speaking” machine, a wondrous invention of the industrial age that would capture sound, but would also take on a life of its own in talking back at listeners. How could the world not be a



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 15

dif­fer­ent place when such a fundamental rule of physics had now been overthrown? Before the phonograph, according to one historian, “­every sonic phenomenon had possessed a unity of time and space; it occurred once, for a certain duration, in one place, and then it was gone forever. By embedding time in objects and making pos­si­ble what the economist Jacques Attali has called the stockpiling of sound, recording technology destroyed that uniqueness.”7 “What would have become of such a man in the days of the Salem witchcraft?” asked a reporter upon viewing Edison’s demonstration of the phonograph in 1878.8 Indeed, how magical, maybe more magical than all the ­others, was this invention, to take an ephemeral sound and capture it? Writers searched for words to describe the process—­sounds w ­ ere “­etched” or “imprisoned” or “preserved or bottled up, as it ­were, and kept for ­future use”9—­but none fully conveyed the impossibility of it all. “The New York Sun was fascinated by the metaphysical implications of an invention that could play ‘Echoes from Dead Voices,’ ” according to the historian Randall Stross. And, “The New York Times predicted that a large business would develop in ‘bottled sermons,’ and wealthy connoisseurs would take pride in keeping a ‘well-­ stocked oratorical cellar.’ ”10 One writer claimed that the Marine Band was “rendering itself immortal . . . ​by having its most harmonious strains bottled in large quantities.”11 The Reverend Horatio Nelson Powers claimed to “hoard ­music and speech.”12 Edison himself boldly declared that he had achieved “the captivity of all manner of sound-­waves heretofore designated as ‘fugitive’ and their permanent retention.”13 In what may have seemed more threat than promise, he told the public: Your words, for example, are preserved in tin foil, and w ­ ill come back upon the application of the instrument years ­after you are dead in exactly the same tone of voice you spoke them in. . . . ​This tongue-­less, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, dumb voiceless ­matter, nevertheless mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words, and centuries ­after you have crumbled into dust w ­ ill repeat again and again, to a generation that could never know you, ­every idle thought, ­every fond fancy, e­ very vain word that you choose to whisper against this thin iron diaphragm.14

Upon hearing this pronouncement from Edison, the reporter “thought of that passage of Holy Writ which says, ‘­every idle thought and ­every vain word

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which man thinks or utters are recorded in the Judgment Book.’ Does the Recording Angel sit beside a Celestial Phonograph, against whose spiritual diaphragm some mysterious ether presses the rec­ord of a ­human life?”15 This was no mere technical achievement. This still-­imperfect, this (in Edison’s own words) “poor specimen of a phonograph,” threatened to change not only ­human history, but the hereafter as well.16 No won­der the public wrestled with just what manner of man this Edison was, and just what he wrought. “It sounds more like the devil ­every time,” claimed one listener at Edison’s 1888 demonstration to the National Acad­ emy of Sciences.17 One writer made the connection to Emerson’s thoughts on the invention of the daguerreotype: “We make the sun paint our portraits now, and by-­and-by we ­shall or­ga­nize the echoes as we now or­ga­nize the shadows.”18 Edison wondered if the bigoted and ignorant might not “destroy the machine as an invention of the devil and mob the agents as his regular imps.”19 Taking full advantage of his proximity to New York and his skyrocketing fame, Edison made the rounds of scientific circles and the publicity accorded by the city’s newspaper and magazine industries. Riding the train from Menlo Park to the city, tinfoil-­covered machine in tow, he visited the offices of Scientific American to have his machine vetted, and word of its won­ders broadcast to the scientific community and beyond. P ­ eople came from all over the world to meet the Wizard. Edison welcomed in­ter­est­ing visitors and loved engaging in conversation, often sparring and joking with journalists (whom he loved to fool with his “Wizard” persona).20 Reporters made the trek to the New Jersey hinterlands on special trains arranged by the Pennsylvania Railroad to find the inventor and his crew in the laboratory, tinkering with improvements, Edison harmonizing on “John Brown’s Body” with one of his workmen.21 Nearly all stories of Edison from that time begin with the journey out to visit the Wizard. Very quickly, the now-­legendary biography of the boy inventor and entrepreneur became a standard part of the story, followed by an investigation into Edison the Man, the Scientist, the Wizard. He loved to put on the “­Great Inventor” act for reporters, but all who met and worked with him ­were genuinely intrigued and charmed by “the happy-­hooligan light out of his gray eyes.”22 One visitor recalled, “On meeting him one is first astonished by the extreme buoyancy of his step and his bearing. . . . ​His large head and twinkling eyes give the immediate impression of intense vitality.”23 When the writer George Parsons Lathrop visits Edison in 1890, he finds a man who “is always absolutely himself. He does not pre­sent to one’s observation a mix-



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 17

ture of superficial manners and concealed inner man. . . . ​He has, in a degree which is literally startling, the power of self-­concentration.”24 Edison told Lathrop that he in­ven­ted the phonograph by “logical deduction,” but Lathrop also noticed “mingled abstraction and fire” in Edison’s face and the “imaginative aspect of his mind.”25 Fearing that he would be accused of ventriloquism, or worse, Edison took pains to separate himself from the wizards and magicians and hucksters who trod the stage, especially since charlatans and con men w ­ ere legion in nineteenth-­century popu­lar culture.26 When Kentucky senator James B. Beck spoke into the machine during Edison’s visit to the Senate chamber, he heard back his own words, “I d­ on’t believe in you, I think you are a humbug.”27 One of his chemists l­ ater recalled, “Edison himself was generally referred to as The Old Man. He had nicknamed his experimenters ‘Muckers,’ he himself being the chief Mucker. . . . ​Edison shrank from the word genius ­because of its suggestion of a miraculous power of creating by mere inspiration something out of nothing.”28 But at the same time, Edison loved the dramatic demonstration, mixing the cornpone with his “wizard-­like air.”29 Another visitor captured the awe of arriving in the m ­ iddle of the night to find Edison in his ele­ment, “a midnight workman with supernal forces whose mysterious phenomena have taught me their largest idea of elemental power; a modern alchemist, who finds the phi­los­o­pher’s stone to be made of carbon, and with his magnetic wand changes every-­day knowledge into the pure gold of new applications and original uses. He is THOMAS A. EDISON, at work in his laboratory, deep in his conjuring of Nature while the world sleeps.”30 The public could not help but embrace with awe the invention’s “moral side, a stirring, optimistic inspiration,” but Edison emphasized the practical and scientific nature of the phonograph, promising its use for business and lit­er­a­ture.31 He forecast the day when all the ­musics of the world would be captured and distributed widely, proclaiming, “We ­will phonograph orchestral concerts by brass and string bands, instrumental and vocal solos and part songs. The sheets bearing the sound impressions of this ­music ­will be removed from the phonograph and multiplied to any extent by electrotyping, and persons can make se­lections of any compositions they desire. Then this ­music may be reproduced by any phonograph, with all the original sweetness and expression; and not only that, but the pitch can be raised or lowered by increasing or diminishing the speed of the phonograph.”32

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Edison continued the rounds, visiting Washington, DC, in April 1878, stopping in at the National Acad­emy of Sciences and the House Committee on Patents, meeting with President Rutherford Hayes in the White House in the ­middle of the night,33 and sitting for Matthew Brady for photographic portraits—­itself a fairly new and marvelous method of capturing the impermanent.34 But soon, advances and opportunities in electric lighting grabbed Edison’s attention and he dismissed the talking machine as “a mere toy, which has no commercial value.”35 As Roland Gelatt has noted, “The phonograph, in truth, had been launched prematurely.”36 The sounds emanating from the machine, as miraculous as the ­whole ­thing was, ­were not ­really faithful duplications—­“in fact, to some extent it is a burlesque or parody of the ­human voice,” wrote one wag at the time.37 Not ­until a de­cade ­later, prompted by competition and new developments in the production and use of the phonograph, did he return his attention to the phonograph in his new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Other inventors ­were making incremental improvements in the machine—­stylus, diaphragm, wax replacing tinfoil, motor—­and a new marketplace for recorded ­music emerged. In 1888, he released the “Improved Phonograph” and then the “Perfected Phonograph”—­a typically Edisonian bluff designed to reclaim a place in what was now a crowded field of inventors and entrepreneurs.38 Edison threw the efforts of his com­pany back into the phonograph, launching de­cades of innovation, competition, intrigue, industrial espionage, l­egal ­battles over patents and copyright, and financial skullduggery in the burgeoning recorded m ­ usic business.39 Investor money was poured into the creation of a new factory in West Orange, in part to build phonographs and cylinders for the new coin-­slot m ­ usic business, which began in 1889 when an entrepreneur hooked the phonograph up to four listening tubes, each with its own nickel slot.40 Within a year taverns, saloons, and ­hotels across the country had installed machines for playing the latest in popu­lar ­music, comic songs, monologues, whistling tunes, and hymns.41 ­Music recording and distribution companies sprang up all over to provide the material for the booming industry. West Orange as a site of musical creation began in 1887 when the eleven-­ year old-­classical piano prodigy and sensation Josef Hofmann, who would be called the greatest pianist of his generation, ­stopped in on his U.S. tour to rec­ord some cylinders.42 Soon a­ fter, the famous German musician Hans von Bülow visited Edison. As reported in London in the Musical Times and Sing-



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 19

Thomas A. Edison and ­others with the “perfected” wax-­recording phonograph, circa 1892. Edison is seated in the center, with Fred Ott at the left and Col. George Gouraud at the right. Standing (left to right) are W. K. L. Dickson, Charles Batchelor, A. Theodore Wangemann, John Ott, and Charles Brown. (Library of Congress Prints and Photo­ graphs Division.)

ing Class Circular, ­after recording a pianoforte, Bülow placed the tubes in his ears, “now a look of surprise creeps over his features, his face becomes ashy pale, he staggers back from the machine exclaiming, ‘Mein Gott! Mein Gott! It is bewitched.’ Recovering from what was almost a faint, he begs to be sent home at once, saying that his nerves are completely unstrung, and he must have rest.”43 Ambivalent about the entertainment uses of the phonograph, Edison preferred to focus on the phonograph as a dictation machine for business. In the January  1891 inaugural issue of the National Phonograph Association’s trade publication the Phonogram, Edison emphasized the use of the phonograph in dictation for business and correspondence. He recognized that “through the fa­cil­i­ty with which it stores up and reproduces m ­ usic of all sorts, or whistling and recitations, it can be employed to furnish constant

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amusement to invalids, or to social assemblies, at receptions, dinners, ­etc.,” but he makes no mention of the commercial possibilities of recorded ­music.44 Despite his reluctance, Edison threw his team’s efforts into the phonograph business, and thus into the cylinder production business. By necessity, Edison became a musical majordomo over the next forty years. Typically, he did it his way—­w ith a faith in his own tastes and opinions that surpassed stubbornness. Edison, always keenly aware of the commercial implications of his inventions, was one of the earliest to recognize that recording and distributing the cylinders for playing in the coin-­in-­the-­slot machines provided an opportunity for considerable profit if mass production techniques could be worked out.45 But he steadfastly adhered to the belief that the phonograph was a talking machine, not an entertainment device, and even classified his phonograph with the scientific instruments at world’s fairs, not the musical ones.46 The overarching theme is that Edison always saw the phonograph in scientific terms. Although a main part of his genius was always his ability to situate his technical innovations in the larger scheme of social and commercial relations, with the phonograph a part of him remained stubbornly in the laboratory. Even the ­whole notion of a “perfected” phonograph makes it a scientific prob­lem to be solved not a cultural or artistic one. Ultimately, this would be the downfall of the business. It is not simply that he was wrong, so much as he was oblivious or resistant to the forces beyond the technical that ­were shaping the life of the machine. Despite his narrow focus, his competitive spirit brought him back into the business, and West Orange, New Jersey, thus became one of the first and most impor­tant places in the world where p­ eople gathered to rec­ord ­music when the Columbia Street Studio opened for experimental recording. Over the course of the coming years, the Edison com­pany would also have studios in New York City to make it easier for working singers and musicians to rec­ord during the day before their live shows at night. But Columbia Street remained the main studio for experimentation and testing, producing daily recordings ­ ere anything for both the lab and the marketplace. “Early recording studios w but glamorous dens of technological marvel and musical creativity,” according to the historian Susan Schmidt Horning. “The first studios ­were ­actual laboratories where inventors and mechanics experimented with vari­ous methods of capturing sound.”47 Cylinders had to be recorded in bunches ­because ­there was no method of mass reproduction. The recording studio



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 21

Production of coin-­operated phonograph and cylinder in the Edison factory in West Orange, New Jersey, 1890. (Courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.)

was a laboratory, where Edison’s staff “undertook extensive experimentation with a wide variety of instruments, recording horns, wax cylinder compounds, and methods of adjusting room acoustics.”48 Edison was famous, perhaps most of all, for his dogged experimental method, his willingness to try ­every method that popped into his mind, and in recording ­music, he stayed true to his pro­cess.49 It was in the recording studio, as Horning has noted, “that m ­ usic began the shift from live per­for­mance art to a technologically mediated art.”50 And it was h­ ere that the first scene of performers who gathered to rec­ord was made, the first historical moment in which we can look at how the place of recording s­ haped the pro­cess of making ­music for the participants. The experience of recording ­music during this acoustic era took some getting used to, and many artists resisted. ­There w ­ ere no microphones or amplifiers. All sounds had to be poured into a cone-­shaped horn, or series of horns, which funneled the sound waves down through a narrow opening to a diaphragm that vibrated a stylus needle that then e­ tched a groove into

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­ usic room, Building 5 of the Edison factory complex in West Orange, New Jersey, M 1905. Left to right, Albert Kipfer, A. T. E. Wangemann, and George Boehme. (Courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.)

the wax on the cylinder. The horn worked like a backward megaphone, so that the singer placed his or her face into the wide mouth of the horn.51 As one singer described the pro­cess, it was like “singing with a muzzle on.”52 When a band or orchestra played, ­there might be several horns funneling the sound, but the singer then had to duck between the instrumental parts, with the band arranged in a circle around the horns. The ­whole pro­cess was exceedingly grueling, and involved continual tests and retakes. Perhaps most amazing of all was that in the early days ­there was l­imited duplication capability so that artists had to rec­ord the same song over and over. Each recording produced a unique product. For a singer, at most three horns could be used at a time, each horn leading to its own recording machine that had to be properly calibrated. A band could rec­ord in up to ten horns. So each cylinder sold to the public was actually a unique production. Artists who ­were used to performing onstage for an audience had to learn a ­whole new way of practicing their craft. The opera singer Anna Case remembered, “You had to gauge your own distance from the horn for ­every note. At first, I was guided by a man holding my arm; if I was to get closer, he’d pull me closer, if further away, he’d pull me this way. Fi­nally, I got so that I



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 23

could do it myself, and I think I did all the acoustical rec­ords that way.”53 The Metropolitan Opera star soprano Rosa Ponselle considered the experience “dreadful! Of course I d­ idn’t know any better; neither did anyone e­ lse. It was all done acoustically in ­those days, singing into this awful horn. . . . ​If I sang too loud, it would blast, and the wax master disc would be ruined.”54 Edison complained, “When an extra-­loud sound occurs in a song—­you know, when an Eyetalian has suddenly fallen in love or somep’n—­the recorder needle gives a jump, and then a tiny bit of the wax is chipped out; you can hardly see it without a microscope, but you hear it plenty afterwards.”55 Recording was possibly even tougher for musicians. “It restricted your movements. You had to get very close to it, and it was awkward,” Irving Kaufman remembered. “If you got a ­little too far away—­just three or four or five inches too far—­you d­ idn’t have quite enough presence. Now it was ­simple with the piano. It was an old upright, and they could just put the horn close to get it. But with the violin you had to lean into the horn.”56 Another noted that if he hit the horn accidentally, “that ended it—­you had to make the rec­ ord over.”57 By the late 1890s, Edison could duplicate about twenty-­five cylinders before the wax wore out, but artists still had to rec­ord numerous takes in order to create a marketable product.58 Even ­after duplication pro­cesses ­were ­ hole song perfectly—­there in­ven­ted, artists would have to rec­ord a w ­were no overdubs or inserts. At the Edison studios, three master recordings ­were made, and Edison’s team would choose the one they liked best. The recording pro­cess was grueling, and at Edison, exacting—­“arduous and unromantic,” as one observer described it.59 They experimented with platforms at dif­fer­ent heights for the musicians to sit on, arrayed around the horn. The recordist (they w ­ ere not yet called sound engineers) moved the musicians around, testing each position in relation to the horn and to each other, trying again and again each time they recorded. The trumpeter Edna White remembered practicing all day, over and over, u­ ntil her lips ­were so tired she could barely play. As they fi­nally recorded at the end of the ­ fter making two day, she missed one high note at the end of the song. A ­mistakes the next time through, she refused to play anymore. They had to bring the ­whole orchestra back the next morning, at considerable expense, to rec­ord the three masters of “The Debutante,” each of which had to be technically and musically perfect.60 Adding to the difficulty was the fact that Edison and his competitors ­were exceedingly cautious about revealing their

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techniques, so musicians ­were often not privy to the technical workings of the pro­cess: “How it was equipped and how it does its work are department secrets that even the artists are not permitted to know.”61 More than any of his competitors, Edison saw the challenges as technical rather than artistic. In 1911 Edison rededicated his enterprise to the making of ­music, personally taking over as musical director of the ­whole business. He went about it in the typical Edison way—­listening to all three thousand titles in the Edison cata­log, as well as thousands more from the foreign cata­logs and his competitors, taking notes on tones, techniques, and artists. Over the years, Edison worked daily and continuously on experiments to improve sound and tone. At one point he enlisted the pianist Ernest Stevens in a proj­ect to rec­ ord ­every instrument from ­every spot in the studio. “On the floor we had marked seventy-­five squares,” Stevens recalled. “We’d make tests on each one of the seventy-­five squares with each instrument—­he’d listen to them and say, ‘Assem­ble them all,’ and we’d rec­ord the w ­ hole orchestra. He’d pick apart this, that, and the other ­thing, and we’d have to make more tests.” Stevens began with the saxophonist playing on Square #1, and then moving on to each of the seventy-­five squares. Each member of the orchestra took a turn working through the squares. Edison returned and listened to each recording, selecting the position that sounded best to him for each instrument. Maybe it would take four hours in the morning, b­ ecause he c­ ouldn’t give me any more time than that. Then he’d assign t­ hings. He might go over to the ice h­ ouse, get a load of ice, and pack the horn. He would say, “Go through all ­those experiments again, and I’ll listen to them. In the meantime, I’ll take a nap.” Then he’d say, “Go over and get a load of storage batteries, heat the horn, and make t­ hose same tests.” And he had other tests. He was an experimenter from the word go. He said, “You know, Stevens, the biggest inventions come from the smallest t­ hings. ­There are always ten, a hundred dif­fer­ent ways—­better ways—to do just one ­little single ­thing.” He was never satisfied with the way a job was being done. He’d think of so many ideas. When we experimented with sound effects, it was wonderful to watch his attention to the very smallest of details. He just seemed to have a scientific feeling ­toward every­thing: his home life, his ­music, every­thing.62

­ ecause of this attention to detail, Edison’s cylinders continued to lead the B market in sound quality. When he came out with his first discs in 1912, they ­were universally praised for the superiority of their quality.



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 25

George Werner, left, and Fred C. Burt at Amberola recording session, Columbia Street Studio, West Orange, New Jersey, January 22, 1917. (Courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.)

In 1915 the Edison com­pany introduced a marketing scheme called Tone Tests, which invited audiences to compare the live voice with the recorded one. Edison summoned a distinguished group to the lab to listen to the ­latest model phonograph with a new sales technique. Next to the new phono­ graph was the illustrious soprano Anna Case, fresh off a stint at the Metropolitan Opera, singing alongside her latest recordings. As Case recalled, “Every­body, including myself, was astonished to find that it was impossible to distinguish between my own voice, and Mr. Edison’s re-­creation of it.”63 Then, Edison staged Tone Tests at the finest theaters and local dealers across the country. The historian Emily Thompson has observed that “the act of ­listening to reproductions was implicitly accepted as culturally equivalent to the act of listening to live performers. The establishment of this equivalence was no small accomplishment; for years, the reproduced melodies of the phonograph had been disparaged as ‘canned m ­ usic,’ mechanically preserved products that had more in common with a tin of sardines than with

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Home recording with Edison device. (Courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.)

live m ­ usic. Tone Tests demonstrated, and perhaps helped bring about, a new willingness to accept ­these reproductions as an au­then­tic aspect of musical culture.”64 And, perhaps, by this public gesture, the Tone Tests helped to ­ usic scenes. From h­ ere onward one could listen to privatize the creation of m ­music—­alone or with f­amily and friends—in the comfort of home and be experiencing the real t­ hing, not a reproduction of something e­ lse. The recording was now an au­then­tic article, not simply a disorienting simulation. Edison succeeded at his goal of producing the best sound quality on rec­ ord, but he continued to lag in the marketplace. First, the new discs had to be played only on Edison machines, or with a cumbersome adapter. Even the pro­cess of production was exceedingly temperamental b­ ecause the discs had to be created with perfect care. But more impor­tant, technical proficiency is only part of what makes for a good ­music listening experience. According to Stevens, “We had the best piano rec­ords on the market at that time from the standpoint of tone quality, especially the piano solos made at the Columbia Street studio in West Orange. That was where the side walls, the floors, and



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 27

the ceiling w ­ ere packed with cowhair.” The packing was typical Edison genius, as he was concerned with controlling the movement of sound waves and the vibrations they made. ­After much experimentation, he settled on cowhair. Unfortunately, it was a technical solution that failed as ­music ­because “the Columbia Street studio had a dead sound. The moment you’d walk into the studio it would be so hard to breathe, ­because ­there’d be no vibration and hardly any air.”65 Similarly, based on his own reading of Hermann von Helmholz and the physics of sounds, and his own ideas about sounds becoming tangled up and crisscrossing in the horn, Edison designed extra large horns, including a 125-­foot-­long horn that went through the studio into an adjoining building where the recording machine was tended to by the sound man. The horn was made of solid brass, with 30,000 rivets; it mea­sured 7 feet in dia­meter at the opening—­large enough, it was hoped, to rec­ord a full orchestra—­and tapered down as it passed through the wall of the studio into an adjoining building, down to 3 inches as it reached the recording machine.66 He experimented with packing the horn with ice and with heating the horn.67 The experiments did not work ­because Edison had some fundamental misconceptions about how sound worked.68 If Edison’s ideas about sound waves w ­ ere idiosyncratic, his m ­ usic notions ­were downright ­limited and increasingly out of touch with the tastes of the public, even though he derived extraordinary plea­sure from ­music. One of his musical directors remembered, “­Music did much for Mr. Edison. It relaxed him and stimulated his imagination; he loved it dearly. Mr. Edison did much for ­music. Through his invention of the phonograph, musicians and ­music lovers in remote corners of the world w ­ ere first given the opportunity of enjoying ­music properly presented by the world’s leading artists.”69 George Lathrop noted in his 1890 visit how much Edison enjoyed m ­ usic: “To relieve the strain of intent study and constant experiment, the inventor had just bought an organ; and, with the same energy that marks all his proceedings, he taught himself to play on it. He would rush out from his private laboratory into the main shop in the ­middle of the night, hammer out one or two tunes on the organ with almost ferocious vigor.”70 ­Here, it might be useful to pause to remark on one well-­known aspect of Edison’s life: the man was deaf, having lost his hearing at age ten as a result of a bout of scarlet fever. How extraordinary it was that a deaf man was leading one of the major recording studios in the world. Stevens, who worked with Edison on a daily basis for years as his musical director, understood how

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Edison’s 125-­foot horn at the Columbia Street Studio. Photo taken on November 20, 1942, on the occasion of its dismantling for the recycling of brass for the war effort.

Edison’s deafness affected his musical acumen. “Even though he was stone deaf, I could play any note anywhere on the piano, and he could tell me the exact vibration,” Stevens recalled. “Sometimes he’d get up and put his teeth over the rim of the piano, and get the conduction through his teeth. Of course the higher the pitches, why the fainter it would be to his ear. He could hear best right down the center of the piano, perhaps from two octaves below ­middle C to two octaves above ­middle C.”71 He despised excessive vibration, especially tremolo, and loved to point out to singers and musicians the ­etchings on the wax or the sound of the recording that proved what sometimes only he could hear.72 Edison enjoyed telling the story of when he called attention to a wrong note played by the famous pianist Hans von Bülow: “ ‘Impossible!’ shouted von Bülow. ‘It is impossible for the g­ reat von Bülow to make a ­mistake.’ Well, we brought the wax over and put it on the phonograph. Von Bülow listened and, when he heard the ­mistake he had made, fainted dead away. I ran over, got some w ­ ater and threw it in his face. When



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 29

he came to, he looked bewildered, took his hat and walked out of the room—­ and I’ve never seen Hans von Bülow since that day.”73 Adding to the hearing issues, and perhaps even more impor­tant, was the fact that Edison’s tastes ­were pedestrian. He told his musical director, “Stevens, you know if you want to be successful in the sale of your rec­ords and be accepted, keep your arrangements ­simple and bring out the melody, ­because ­you’re not making rec­ords for the musician, ­you’re making rec­ords for the public, and the public likes to hear the melody not overly arranged. Play so they can follow the melody and detect it.”74 Only when Edison was out of town could Stevens rec­ord modern ­music. The chemist M. A. Rosanoff declared that Edison was not interested in culture at all, neither lit­er­a­ture nor ­music: “If ­music is a language, it was Greek to Edison.”75 Some of Edison’s tastes seem to have derived from his hearing loss. “He liked low tones,” Stevens recalled. “High tones, no. They seemed to grate [on] his ear and vibrate too much.”76 He disliked vibrations—­hence the cowhair and 125-­foot horn—so that the piano was r­ eally the only instrument that sounded good on Edison recordings. He especially hated the violin, particularly the E string, which he found irritating and “screechy.”77 “It grates upon my ears terribly,” he complained.78 He once mused about removing the scratching from the violin, not noting that the ­whole method of making sound with a bow on strings comes from that scratching.79 Victor Young, Edison’s pianist and musical director in the 1920s, remembered: I firmly believe that the greatest disappointment in the life of Thomas A. Edison was when his hearing failed to the extent that he could no longer enjoy ­music. From early youth his hearing was impaired but up ­until about six years ago he could listen to ­music by means of a device he used. This device was ­simple. It consisted of a medium sized horn from one of Mr.  Edison’s early cylinder amberola phonographs, with a piece of rubber connected to the small end of the horn and made to fit closely over his right ear. The large end of the horn was placed directly in the horn of one of his latest phonographs, when he listened to rec­ords. When he listened to the piano he would put the end of the horn directly inside the g­ rand piano. His hearing with this device was extremely acute. He could hear “echoes” and “hammer strokes” which ­were at first indistinct to our normal ears. He would often smile and say, “It takes a deaf man to hear ­music.”80

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He sometimes judged the sound not by what he heard, but by what he saw on the cylinder or disc as the stylus cut a groove. At one point, Edison hired the violinist Samuel Gardner to make tone tests and to listen with Edison to other recordings made by the ­great musical artists of the day. Gardner remembers their session: He said, “Awful sound. ­Those p­ eople have a very shaky bow. They d­ on’t know how to draw the bow.” And I thought, “That’s very strange.” . . . ​I knew immediately he ­didn’t like the vibrato. So I drew a dead sound, the worst kind pos­si­ ble. He said, “That’s ­great! That’s ­great!” Then I found out that he ­didn’t know anything about ­music. Nothing . . . He ­didn’t like a groove that had a shake in it. So he made decisions not by the ear very much, b­ ecause he was pretty deaf, but by looking at the rec­ord through a magnifying glass. He thought that vibrato was done with the right arm. It’s done with the left hand! He said, “Now I want you to play that piece for me—­ give me a straight sound.” Well, I played it. He thought it was marvelous, and I thought it was horrible.81

Gardner ended up playing with as ­little vibrato as pos­si­ble and asked that his name not be put on the finished recording, concluding, “His deafness had nothing to do with his musicality, ­because he d­ idn’t have any.”82 Victor Young remembered the daily grind of Edison’s method with more equanimity: Mr. Edison personally listened to and “O.K.’d” ­every phonograph rec­ord produced by his com­pany. For a long time he heard played or sung ­every composition desired for recording, and it was necessary to have his personal “O.K.,” before recording was made. He was not a practical musician but read a g­ reat deal about ­music and had definite likes and dislikes as to composers and musical works. He did not like jazz; neither did he like the ultra modern compositions. He preferred compositions of straight flowing melodic outlines with not too complicated harmonic foundations. He seemingly never tired of listening to ­music. He would sit for many hours listening to me playing compositions, seeking to find numbers that met with his approval for phonograph recording. One day he listened for six hours without interruption.83



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 31

One imagines Young playing ­those six hours without daring to complain: “In working with Mr. Edison every­body concerned had to be ‘on his toes,’ so to speak. He had definite ideas and ­those ideas ­were carried out to the minutest detail by his associates.”84 Edison’s doggedness and perfectionism had built his c­ areer, so in m ­ usic he continued to see all prob­lems as technical. When Sergei Rachmaninoff—­ trained in the Moscow Conservatory, universally recognized as one of the era’s geniuses as a composer and pianist—­came to audition for Edison, he was summarily dismissed by the old man. Stevens remembered: ­ ere was an arrangement for Rachmaninoff to come in and play for Edison Th one day in 1919. Rachmaninoff came into the studio early, but before I could get to him to tell him not to play his Prelude in C-­Sharp Minor—­because I knew it would hurt the old gent’s ears—­why the old gent came shuffling in. He sat down in a chair alongside the piano, which was a nine-­foot Lauter g­ rand, and he put a special horn in his ear and said, “Go ahead” (in nasal, high-­pitched voice, imitating Edison). So Rachmaninoff played the first notes of his C-­Sharp Minor Prelude. The old gent said, “That’s enough. Whoever told you you ­were a piano player? ­You’re a pounder.” Rachmaninoff never said a word. He got up from the piano bench, walked over to the hat rack, got his hat and coat, and walked out the door. The old gent turned to me and said, “Big head, big head.”85

­ fter initially rejecting Rachmaninoff, Edison was persuaded to have ten sides A recorded for the label. ­After their success, Edison had no interest in more. Again, his stubbornness blocked him from sensing how the public was mak­ usic. Stevens remembers, “He said that he ­didn’t see ing use of recorded m why Anna Case and all the opera singers had to be paid so much money and bowed to, b­ ecause all they had was just a l­ ittle piece of muscle down t­ here in their throat that vibrates. Every­body has one.”86 Ultimately, he did not see the point in paying the more famous artists the prices they w ­ ere beginning to command. Generally, he would authorize a handful of sessions, enough to place the artist in the cata­log. “We care nothing for the reputation of the artists singers or instrumentalists,” Edison wrote. “All that we desire is that the voice ­shall be as perfect as pos­si­ble.”87 He de­cided that while his competitors, particularly Victor with its Red Seal Rec­ords (see chapter 2), emphasized the names and celebrity of their recording artists, he would continue

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to market the Edison brand as a mark of the highest quality, eschewing the modern culture of celebrity and consumerism—or limiting the celebrity to his own image. Edison had no shortage of confidence in his tastes, even in the face of rejection by the marketplace or disagreement from p­ eople with ­actual musical talent. “Mr. Edison was interested in musicians and liked to talk with them,” Victor Young recalled. “Of all the musicians who visited Mr. Edison during the time I was associated with him, I think he enjoyed most the visit of Harold Bauer. Mr. Bauer seemed to mea­sure up to Mr. Edison’s idea of a well-­ rounded musician. He was perfectly at home in the mechanics of ­music (overtones, vibrations, hammer strokes, and so forth), and his visit seemed to end with a profound mutual admiration.”88 On the other hand, “I remember Carl Flesch’s visit at the Laboratory. Mr. Flesch is one of the foremost violinists and pedagogues of our time. A ­ fter it had been de­cided what new violin solos Mr. Flesch would rec­ord, Mr. Edison said, ‘I would like to have you make over the Ave Maria leaving out the octaves. No violinist can play octaves in tune.’ Unfortunately, Mr. Edison was right scientifically, but octaves played by Carl Flesch still sound mighty good to me.”89 Edison stood at a divide in American culture that he helped create. He shared many sentiments with John Philip Sousa, one of his favorite musical artists, who had been the most famous and vocal opponent of the “Menace of Mechanical ­Music,” as his 1906 article was titled, as a “substitute for ­human skill, intelligence, and soul.” Just as the recorded m ­ usic industry was reaching a critical point of maturity, Sousa sounded the alarm: “I foresee a marked deterioration in American m ­ usic and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to m ­ usic in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the vari­ous music-­reproducing machines.” Sousa feared the loss of that elusive “soul” in pursuit of mechanical, scientific perfection, declaring, ­ ere paramount in “From the days when the mathematical and mechanical w ­music, the strug­gle has been ­bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful. And now, in this the twentieth ­century, come ­these talking and playing machines, and offer again to reduce the expression of ­music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving t­hings, which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful, living, breathing d­ aughters.” Just as the nightingale and thunder cannot be replaced by the penny whistle and



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 33

the ­drummer, “the living, breathing example alone” can inspire. And Sousa rightly feared that the American working class would no longer learn to play “pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos,” but would become slaves to the commercial products and automatic machines. In the end, children, exposed only to mechanical ­music, would “become simply h­ uman phonographs—­without soul or expression.”90 By the time Edison met Sousa years ­later, in May 1923, recording technology was an accepted fact of the global soundscape. Sousa had recorded “Stars and Stripes Forever” for Edison in 1909. But the two men shared many sentiments about culture. Edison complained that “pianists pound u­ ntil the instrument loses its character and becomes a roaring mass of conflicting vibrations which have no musical effect upon the audience—­merely a confusion of sounds. I have keen sympathy for the elementally-­minded man who longs for something he can comprehend.”91 Edison resisted the culture of celebrity and “fakery in ­music” and “fakery press agency work.”92 The historian Leonard DeGraaf has shown how Edison’s dealers complained about the lack of “artists of reputation”: ­ ecause of the difficulty of finding artists who could meet Edison’s technical B standards, the com­pany tended to use the same artists repeatedly. As a result, Edison rec­ords not only lacked “star” appeal, they also lacked dif­fer­ent musical styles and interpretations. Edison dealers understood that consumers wanted more than just technical perfection. According to one dealer, “it would seem to me that if your com­pany would take on a new singer occasionally or a new orchestra, it would help ­matters. You must realize that the owner of an Edison instrument does not want all of his songs or, practically all of them, sung by the same singer.”93

Like his friend and colleague Henry Ford, Edison straddled the modern world uncomfortably. No two men did more to usher in the twentieth ­century, yet both of them remained firmly rooted in their pre­industrial roots. Henry Ford vowed, “I ­will build a car for the ­great multitude. It ­will be large enough for the f­ amily, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It ­will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, ­after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it ­will be so low in price that no man making a good salary ­will be unable to own one—­and enjoy with his f­ amily the blessing of hours of plea­sure in God’s

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g­ reat open spaces.” This was truly a radical innovation for an industry still confined to the luxury market. As demo­cratic and admirable as Ford’s plan was, ­little did he realize how much his automobile would do to close up t­ hose open spaces. And when competition came from General Motors with dif­ fer­ent designs, styles, and colors, Ford responded, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”94 Although p­ eople revered the inventors, whom they considered heroes in their own lifetimes, customers wanted more than black, they wanted more than the Ford or Edison name as a mark of quality. In the world Edison and Ford created, the inventors and producers w ­ ere themselves products to be marketed. The historian Lisa Gitelman observes: The connections between the laboratory and the marketplace w ­ ere never more explicit than they ­were on Edison’s product labels. Recognizing and encouraging the weight of his own celebrity as an inventor, Edison plastered himself and his lab all over the products he offered for sale. Rec­ords ­were “Made at the Edison Laboratory, Orange, New Jersey,” a claim that elided existing corporate, personnel, and financial distinctions between Edison’s experimental and commercial enterprises in West Orange. Rec­ords ­were presented as if they w ­ ere the individual inventions of the lab, rather than the bulk products of the Edison Phonograph Works and the National Phonograph Com­pany. The implication ill-­served them l­ ater on, as market emphasis continued to shift from the novel to the fash­ion­able, from the in­ven­ted to the up-­to-­date, and Edison’s cylinders started to look quaint rather than modern.95

The twentieth-­century marketplace was fickle, demanding constant innovation, not just in technology, but in style. “By designing an entertainment phonograph and lowering the cost of machines and rec­ords in the 1890s Edison did much to create the phonograph industry, but he eventually failed ­because he based his marketing decisions on a set of ideas and assumptions that did not apply to a consumer market,” DeGraaf notes. “Edison’s ability to design efficient and reliable technologies served him well in his late 19th ­century producer market, but it was not enough to succeed in a market where consumers expected more than just technical perfection.”96 Edison actively resisted consumers’ attempts to intervene. When he heard that users ­were speeding up their cylinders to make the songs more upbeat, he complained, “This change of speed is far worse than any loss due to having dance



Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 35

rec­ords too slow. . . . ​They are absolutely right time but young folks of the ­family want this fast time & like stunts & I dont want it & wont have it.”97 Similarly, Edison despised jazz and modernist m ­ usic: All the world wants m ­ usic; but it does not want Debussy; nor does it want complicated operatic arias. I know at my own expense. Sometimes out of four thousand rec­ords advertised all up and down the land, some made by men and ­women of very ­great reputation, the public deliberately selects for its own, some ­simple heartfelt melody, sung by some comparatively unknown singer, and demands this in such quantities that we have a hard time manufacturing enough. ­There is no closed corporation in ­music, no group controlling musical taste. The public wants what it wants; and it does not hesitate to let its wants be known. Why should it be forced to have complicated m ­ usic when it cries to have s­ imple ­music?98

But the public increasingly wanted more than the s­ imple ­music of Edison’s youth and imagination. As Rosanoff, the chemist who was hired to improve the wax formula used on cylinders, put it, “commercial demand was his mea­sure of need.” But, when Edison was told that the Eu­ro­pe­ans wanted ­grand opera and classical ­music, “he merely said, ‘I d­ on’t believe it.’ ” Ultimately, Edison’s tastes—­and, thus, what he thought ­were the public’s tastes—­ran to the pedestrian: “His rec­ords in ­those days ­were mostly catchy tunes and plumber’s ­family entertainment pieces in the vein of ‘Mary, Gimme My Boots.’ ”99 Edison insisted, “The public taken as a ­whole is very elementary, very primitive in its tastes. . . . ​My object is to reach the greater number of p­ eople with the most ­wholesome kind of appeal.”100 Edison in­ven­ted modernity but did not control it. The products he was selling ­were “Edison” and “inventions,” and he had to let loose t­ hose inventions once they ­were removed from the lab to the marketplace. Although Edison partook of the cultural reconstruction of American society as much as anyone, it was that cultural reconstruction that rendered him obsolete. Soon, not the inventions and technology transformed the nation and the world, but the use to which they ­were put and the cultural transformations they ushered. Edison was old-­fashioned, a relic of the nineteenth ­century, but also a victim of the increasingly fickle nature of the modern consumer culture he helped create.

2 • THE VICTOR TALKING M ACHINE COM­PANY AND THE SCENE AT HOME

At the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany in Camden, New Jersey, the phonograph moved from being a scientific instrument to a musical one, inaugurating several developments in the history of the recording industry. Victor pioneered technologies in recording and playing and methods of presenting and marketing m ­ usic to the public. If Edison’s phonograph had introduced a new way for p­ eople to gather to make m ­ usic—­assembled around a cone in a cramped recording studio—it also created a modern way for ­people to gather to appreciate ­music, first in the arcades and eventually in the home. The Victor com­pany eventually surpassed Edison in both, with a stable of recording artists and the invention and marketing of the Victrola for parlors across Amer­i­ca. Although it is true that many p­ eople w ­ ere involved in all the phonograph and recording work at the Edison com­pany, it is impossible not to keep coming back to the man himself. The story of the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany, on the other hand, involves a range of talented ­people who combined over the years to make the com­pany a leader in the marketplace, establishing new types of scenes both in Camden, New Jersey, and in homes across Amer­i­ca. When Edison ­stopped work on the phonograph in 1878 to focus on the electric light, other inventors stepped into the breach. ­After winning the prestigious Volta Prize for the invention of the telephone, Alexander Graham 36



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 37

Bell and his partner Charles Sumner Tainter used the prize money to establish the Volta Laboratory in Washington, DC. Soon they patented a pro­ cess for “cutting a sound line in a solid body”—­recording onto wax—­and developed the graphophone, a competitor to Edison’s phonograph. In Washington also, the Columbia Phonograph Com­pany peddled phonographs as dictating machines, but the technology was still so delicate as to be nearly useless. They began to use the machines to play songs at fairs and resorts, attaching ten tubes to each cylinder, collecting five cents from each customer.1 The first “coin-­in-­the-­slot” machine appeared in a storefront in San Francisco in 1889 and customers flocked to the strange device that had tubes snaking out, which they pressed to their ears. The machines played cylinders by Edison, Columbia, and other burgeoning companies, including marches by  John Philip Sousa and the popu­lar whistling songs by John  Y. Atlee and by George Washington Johnson, “the Whistling Coon.”2 When “coin-­ in-­the-­slot” arcade machines spread across the nation, ­there was an instant market for recorded musical entertainment. Columbia hired a hustling teenage piano player named Fred Gaisberg to find talent to accompany on recordings destined for the coin-­operated machines to be installed at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and local saloons and beer gardens. Billed as “Professor Gaisberg,” the sixteen-­year-­old accompanied dozens of singers on hundreds of recordings through the brief coin-­in-­the-­slot craze of the mid-1890s, the first mass-­produced recorded m ­ usic in American history.3 The recorded musical cylinder sat at the center of the radical changes sweeping society at the end of the c­ entury. The 1890s have long been seen as a dramatic turning point in American history, what one historian calls the shift from a culture of production to a culture of consumption.4 P ­ eople navigated the generation-­long transition from what we call Victorian to modern culture—­all the dramatic, even radical, ways that American life was changed in the de­cades around the turn of the ­century, the changes that are hardly captured by the bland, textbook terms “industrialization,” “urbanization,” “immigration,” “modernization,” and so on. ­These transformations w ­ ere felt as disruptions, no more so than in the 1890s, when the final b­ attles of the Indian wars (and the “closing of the frontier”), the dramatic and violent ­battles between l­abor and capital (at Pullman and Homestead), constant racial pogroms and lynchings accompanying the disenfranchisement of African Americans, and the populist uprising and diffusion—­all during a

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de­cade of “­great depression”—­culminating in the arrival of the United States on the global stage with the conquest of Hawaii and wars in Latin Amer­i­ca and Asia. Central to t­ hese transformations was the creation of mass production of goods and the commercialization and commodification of more and more of the stuff of everyday life, and thus of interactions and experiences. All t­ hose ­grand transformations ­were experienced on the level of the senses, particularly sight and sound. Similar changes w ­ ere occurring throughout American culture, as the very dailiness of life for all classes of Americans and immigrants underwent dramatic transformations. So, for example, the halftone printing pro­cess brought color into p­ eople’s homes in mass-­produced, factory-­made labels on the cans and boxes of new national branded goods. Kinetoscope parlors made available moving images from around the world. In the 1890s ­people listened to m ­ usic in phonograph parlors and, increasingly, in the home. The types of ­music recorded “offered the same range and often the  same names as a live concert or ­music hall show,” but for ­people all over the country who could not make their way to Broadway or an urban v­ audev­ille venue.5 As David Laing has observed, “recorded ­music combined the polar opposites of the domestic interior and the vaudev­ille stage.”6 The quality of the m ­ usic recorded on cylinders was still, however, quite low, and the craze died off as soon as the novelty did. ­There was no way to reproduce the cylinders, so multiple machines with cones had to be set up, and each song had to be recorded over and over again. The cylinders ­were full of crackles and hisses, and the machines ­were guaranteed to break down regularly. W ­ omen’s voices and violins w ­ ere not captured well by the recorders, so the market was dominated by marching bands, whistling songs, and novelty songs with a piano accompaniment.7 A series of technical innovations would be required before the phono­ usic production and distribution. graph could be more than a novelty for m In 1887 the inventor Emile Berliner devised the gramophone, which played flat discs instead of cylinders, spurring Edison to renew his activity on the phonograph and release the “perfected phonograph” in 1888. Berliner’s gramophone discs had the advantage that they could be mass reproduced from a master disc, thus enabling immediate widespread distribution. Berliner made an impor­tant connection when he met “Professor Gaisberg,” the man who would become the recorded ­music industry’s first talent scout, producer, and artists and repertoire (A&R) man, with a ­career spanning the next half



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 39

c­ entury. Gaisberg had been working for Columbia Rec­ords, Edison’s major competitor, when he encountered Berliner’s new methods of recording: “Berliner placed a muzzle over [Billy] Golden’s mouth and connected this up by a rubber hose to a diaphragm. I was at the piano, the sounding-­board of which was also boxed up and connected to the diaphragm by a hose resembling an elephant’s trunk. Berliner said, ‘Are you ready?’ and upon our answering ‘Yes,’ he began to crank like a barrel-­organ, and said ‘Go.’ ” Berliner’s method of recording, with the stylus cutting a lateral groove on a flat disc, produced a “beautiful round tone” that left Gaisberg “spell-­bound.” “Before I departed that day, I exacted a promise from Berliner that he would let me work for him when his machine was ready for development.”8 Major improvements ­were still needed, however. The discs themselves ­were unstable u­ ntil Berliner contracted with the Duranoid Com­pany of Newark, New Jersey, button manufacturers, to produce matrices made from a newly developed shellac mixture. Gaisberg remembered, “I was pre­sent when Berliner received the first package of gramophone rec­ords from the Duranoid Com­pany. With trembling hands he placed the new disc on the reproducer and sounds of undreamed quality issued from the rec­ord . . . ​revealing tones hitherto mute to us. Berliner shouted with excitement and all of us . . . ​ danced with joy around the machine.”9 The machine, though, was not ready for market as long as it depended on a hand to crank the turntable at a steady pace. Gaisberg found an ad for the Camden machinist Eldridge Johnson’s “clockwork motors” for sewing machines and commissioned him to come up with something for the gramophone. “Tall, lanky, stooping and taciturn, deliberate in his movements and always assuming a low voice with a Down-­East Yankee drawl,” Johnson was a typical, “in­de­pen­dent, poverty-­stricken inventor,” toiling away as a mechanic, tinkerer, and inventor.10 It was in his ­humble machine shop, tucked in back of Collings’s h­ orse­less carriage factory on Front Street, that Camden, New Jersey’s, contribution to ­music history began.11 Johnson was unimpressed by the gramophone, but intrigued: “The ­little instrument was badly designed. It sounded like a partially-­educated parrot with a sore throat and a cold in the head, but the ­little wheezy instrument caught my attention and held it fast and hard. I became interested in it as I had never been interested in anything before.”12 A ­ fter a ­couple of false starts, Johnson was able to design a working spring-­motor gramophone to take to market.13 The com­pany opened a small recording studio in Philadelphia and then another

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in New York City to churn out product for the first mass market in recorded ­music, and the machines (along with many of the rec­ords) themselves w ­ ere made in Camden. Berliner’s gramophone offered advantages, the most impor­tant was the flat disc pro­cess for mass duplication, something that was not pos­si­ble with Edison’s cylinders. The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany was incorporated in Camden in 1901, bringing together Berliner’s and Johnson’s work to manufacture and market the first lateral-­cut, flat disc recording device and the discs to play on the gramophone. The com­pany bought the rights to Francis Barraud’s painting of a fox terrier listening to a phonograph, and had the original Edison machine painted over with the new gramophone. The image, dubbed “His Master’s Voice,” was to become perhaps the most successful corporate icon in marketing history. Johnson’s machine shop in Camden became the home base for corporate and manufacturing purposes, growing from its back alley origins to cover acres of waterfront property. From the start Victor was a globally oriented ­music business. Harry O. Sooy was hired in 1898 and l­ ater made chief recording engineer. Early on C. G. Child and Alfred Clark came in to oversee musical development, and Fred Gaisberg toured the world in the coming de­cades, establishing the recorded ­music business (like the si­mul­ta­neously emerging world of cinema), as international in scope for production, distribution, and consumption. In 1907 Victor opened a recording studio at the Camden grounds, in a building on the corner of Front and Cooper Streets. Called Building No. 15, the fa­cil­i­ty was expanded numerous times over the years. Berliner and Johnson’s inventions, and the incorporation of Victor, revolutionized the recorded ­music business and the ways ­people could enjoy ­music. With Berliner’s gramophone, the phonograph became what Jacques Attali calls an “instrument of sociality.”14 It also became an instrument of consumerism. Whereas Edison’s original design combined recording and playback, so that o­ wners could make their own recordings, with the gramophone the production and consumption of ­music took place in dif­fer­ent spheres. Victor’s gramophone, according to David Suisman, “introduced a structural and social division between making [a] recording and listening to it. With Edison’s design, access to one assumed access to the other as well; sound recording was something ­people could do. With Berliner’s design, a wedge was driven between production and consumption; sound recording was something p­ eople could listen to.”15 The phonograph went from the realm of



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 41

science and invention to the realm of ­music and culture, as a “nascent cultural industry.”16 The commercialization of recorded m ­ usic changed the development of scenes in two ways. To a greater degree than they had with Edison, artists came to rec­ord as artists and, increasingly as recording artists. They gathered with like-­minded musicians and producers to create recorded ­music as commodity, as art, and as disposable gimmick. It is impor­tant to note the ways ­these changes structured social relations at the time. Suisman notes, “At the turn of the twentieth ­century, a new musical culture emerged as the modern ­music industry took shape. This culture included many of the terms and conditions that structure the way we now understand and experience ­music, and its emergence had worldwide ramifications. The rise of m ­ usic as big business was a multinational and transnational phenomenon, but one in which the United States had a leading position.”17 That is, t­ hese w ­ ere not mere technological improvements. The phonograph launched the industries that—­ together with other industrial technologies—­transformed the sound of Amer­i­ca, creating the sound of modernity. “­Music was now a presence in schools, in magazines, on the streets, and in commercial spaces as never before,” Suisman observes. “Once the ­music industries w ­ ere filling the air with ­music, American society sounded dif­fer­ent than it had a generation ­earlier. Much of the change was attributable to the thunderous cacophony of mass industrialization and urbanization, but ­music mattered too.”18 The turn of the ­century marked, as well, an extraordinary period of invention, intrigue, l­egal wrangling, and competition. Patent and copyright laws had yet to sort out the new technologies and the sound products they produced. The marketplace was a chaos of competing, often incompatible formats. As in so many wild-­west–­style new and un­regu­la­ted markets, companies spied on, stole from, and sued each other. Emile Berliner was cheated by his own sales agent Frank Seamon and was for a while enjoined from selling his own products.19 In the early days of the twentieth ­century, the main market for recorded m ­ usic still consisted of nickelodeons. The technologies, both cylinder and disc, while improving, still provided sounds that ­were too jarring for the listener to get lost in. So recorded sound was still mainly a novelty. Then came Caruso.20 Enrico Caruso’s 1902 recordings, made in Milan, catapulted Victor to the top of the industry alongside Edison and Columbia. The Victor flat disc passed Edison’s cylinder, though it would take another

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de­cade for Edison to release his own discs. The sound was superior, and Caruso’s rich mid-­range tenor was perfect for the demands of the acoustic recording pro­cess. Caruso himself was already on the way to renown within the opera world, but the recordings established him as an international celebrity and recording star, perhaps the biggest star in the world.21 Caruso had already been a star in the opera world since his per­for­mance at the Lirico in 1898 and his tour of Rome, St. Petersburg, and Buenos Aires the following year. He sang, “as one of the good Lord’s creatures in that happy land can—­with the sun and the sky and the stars of the perfumed night in his voice expressing the ever-­new marvels of the everlasting universal life.”22 A ­ fter Caruso’s debut at La Scala in 1901, the managing director remarked, “By God, if this young Neapolitan continues to sing like this, he ­will make the ­whole world talk about him.”23 As the Australian soprano Nellie Melba described, “As a voice—­pure and s­ imple—­his was the most wonderful tenor I have ever heard. It rolled out like an organ. It had a magnificent ease, and a truly golden richness.”24 His voice was “described in ­every language with the same two adjectives: ‘velvety’ and ‘golden.’ ”25 When Gaisberg, then working for Victor as well as London’s Gramophone and Typewriter Com­pany, came to Milan to hear Caruso, he immediately knew that he had discovered gold. Gaisberg liked to tell the story of how he telephoned the home office with a request to offer Caruso £100 for the recording of ten arias, and then ignored their rejection of the exorbitant sum.26 So, the next day, April 11, 1902, Gaisberg set up shop in his suite at the ­Grand ­Hotel di Milano for a session, with the recording technology hidden ­behind a sheet hung as a curtain to protect the precious trade secrets of the gramophone. Gaisberg recounted the day in his memoirs: “One sunny after­noon, Caruso, debonair and fresh, sauntered into our studio and in exactly two hours sang ten arias to the piano accompaniment of Maestro Cottone. . . . ​Not one stecca [false note], blemish, or huskiness marred this feat.”27 Caruso’s voice transcended the still considerable limits of the technology, as his “slightly baritonal quality helped drown out the surface noise inherent in the early discs, and his vocal timbre seemed particularly attuned to the characteristics of the acoustic recording diaphragm. ‘He was,’ Gaisberg says, ‘the answer to a recording man’s dream.’ Even on the inadequate reproducers of the time, his rec­ords sounded rich and vibrant; and in addition they offered per­for­mances of surpassing beauty and artistic refinement.”28 By the time Caruso arrived in London for his first per­for­ mances at Covent Garden the following month, the rec­ords had already



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 43

transformed the world of recorded m ­ usic, taking it from the slightly (or very) seedy penny arcades to the refined domestic spaces of the middle-­class parlors. If the phonograph had brought modernity—­with all its radical transformative properties—­into the life of average ­people, Caruso, more than any other person, restored some of the refinement to the daily lives of the growing m ­ iddle class. Caruso demo­cratized opera, without removing its status as a mark of distinction, class, and refinement.29 It is impor­tant to pause on Caruso himself—­the enormity of his talent, the effect he had on listeners, and the oversize personality that he projected, ideal for a celebrity in the modern age—­prodigious in his appetites and grander than the rest of us, but ­humble, ordinary folk in his ways of relating to the masses and individuals. His son recalled, “The magic of my ­father’s singing was inseparable from his person and personality. The combination of man and artist gave him the communicative powers that held his listeners spellbound; past and beyond the wondrous voice, this combination was the key to his enormous appeal.”30 Photo­graphs rec­ord a man si­mul­ta­neously goofy and personable, hamming it up in the New York City immigrant neighborhood on Rivington Street and mugging for the camera like a child, but more talented, and thus rightfully more wealthy and g­ rand than we could ever realistically hope to be. But still we hope. Even his press agent, the pioneering Edward Bernays, could not resist his charms, writing in his memoirs, “His glamour affected me as it did ­others. I was talking to the sun god, and the sun god by his light obliterated his surroundings.”31 Touring with Caruso, Bernays recalled, “I felt as though I ­were walking on the boulevards of Paris with a popu­lar monarch at the height of his glory.”32 Fellow tenor, the Irishman John McCormack saw Caruso perform La Boheme at Covent Garden: “When I listened to the opening phrases of Puccini’s ­music, sung by that indescribably glorious voice as Caruso alone could sing, my jaw dropped as though hung on a hinge. Such smoothness and purity of tone, and such quality; it was like a stream of liquid gold. . . . ​The sound of Caruso’s voice that night lingered in my ears for months, and ­will doubtless linger ­there always. It ­will always be to me one of the memorable moments of my life.” And, now, with Caruso’s voice on rec­ord, the voice could linger for eternity. In 1903, when Caruso arrived in the United States to tour and rec­ord, opera became a popu­lar entertainment for the first time, merging high and low culture.33 Bernays, who made a ­career of manipulating public opinion and “engineering consent,” concluded that Caruso’s “publicity

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breakthrough hastened the ac­cep­tance and spread of classical ­music in all its forms. . . . ​A pioneer society had disregarded classical ­music, had felt it was enjoyed only by the highbrows and by ­those with special knowledge. Caruso changed this attitude, for he evoked in the listener a personal reaction of deep gratification that made his m ­ usic universal in its appeal rather than l­imited to a special group.”34 Caruso—­and Victor—­democratized high culture. Caruso became the face—­and voice—of Victor. Compton Mackenzie, the ­great Scottish writer and critic, declared, “I do not hesitate to say that his master’s voice heard by that fox-­terrier was the voice of Caruso himself.”35 Caruso came to Victor’s studios in Camden to rec­ord nearly two dozen times, including for his famous version of George M. Cohan’s ­Great War song “Over ­There.” His son accompanied him to one of his final sessions in Camden: We drove to Camden in his powder-­green Lancia, and I was surprised that he was no more apprehensive than any clerk or plumber on his way to work. He ­didn’t talk much on the way, but when he did, it was obvious that he was not trying to spare his voice. Another ­thing I found amazing, not then but many years ­later: He did not warm up before the session, or at least I have absolutely no recollection that he did. He just turned ­toward the recording horn and sang. . . . ­Father recorded multiple takes of a group of Italian songs. I had never before heard him sing at full voice at such close range. The sound that filled the studio was a marvel that fi­nally made me sit up and respond to the miracle of ­Father’s singing. He sang magnificently. The volume and beauty of his voice ­were overwhelming. The voice had such aural solidity that one felt the sound itself had a physical presence and could somehow be touched. I soon forgot all about the machinery, cutting n­ eedles and the rest, and listened to ­Father transfixed. . . . It struck me that ­Father was not merely delivering a tune but was living each song. His face was animated, and he acted out the words as he would on the concert stage, so that I not only heard but also saw the song. The only par­tic­u­ lar number I remember was “A vuchella.” He sang it several times, and each take was better than before. He had a good time singing it too: He would smile and pucker up—­one could swear he actually saw some lovely girl smiling back at him from the recording horn—­and he closed the song with a flirtatious wink. . . . ​ The recording he made that day is one of my all-­time favorites. Fred Maisch, who was a recording engineer for the Victor Com­pany for thirty-­six years and who made thirty thousand master discs in his time, said in 1944 that when Caruso recorded the “Quartet” from Rigoletto, he had to stand



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 45

“back six feet from the other singers so as not to blast the recording apparatus.” Reading that comment and remembering the session of 1919, I am certain he was not exaggerating.36

Caruso signed his first contract with Victor in 1904 and recorded exclusively for the com­pany throughout his life. He recorded dozens of best-­selling sides throughout his c­ areer, with some of his recordings unequaled to this day, his final session taking place at Victor’s Camden studios over three days in September 1920. His rec­ords sold continuously throughout his life and beyond, thus “making a small fortune for Caruso and a large fortune for Victor.”37 The force of Caruso’s voice and personality made him a star, but the personnel and conditions created by the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany made his recordings state of the art. Working with the man­ag­er of the recording laboratory Calvin Child and the artistic director Victor DeGogorza, Caruso was able to sing with ease in the knowledge that the com­pany would never allow him to release a flawed recording. Calvin Child, in essence, became Caruso’s personal representative at Victor as the two worked closely together at ­every stage of each recording.38 And, alongside Nipper, Caruso became the face of the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany. Compton Mackenzie summed up Caruso’s significance for the medium of phonographic recording upon the tenor’s death, “Fifteen years ago, when violin solos sounded like bluebottles on a win­dow pane, overtures like badly played mouth-­organs, chamber-­music like amorous cats, brass bands like runaway steam-­rollers, and the piano like an old ­woman clicking her false teeth, Caruso’s voice ­proclaimed a millennium and preserved our faith.”39 If Caruso’s singing ­contained any faults, “they ­were the faults of superfluous energy, of superfluous emotion, of superfluous vitality.”40 With Caruso, Victor began to pioneer ways of making an audience. If Edison had relied on his own image as the Wizard of Menlo Park to make the case to listeners, Victor created a ­whole new corporate image that personalized the relationship between the com­pany, the products (both rec­ord player and rec­ord), and the listener. With Nipper, the dog listening to “His Master’s Voice,” the com­pany created one of the enduring advertising symbols of the twentieth c­ entury. Victor also spent money on advertising as no com­ pany had before, taking out two-­page spreads in popu­lar magazines starting with the Saturday Eve­ning Post. U ­ nder Johnson, Victor hooked into the already existing cultural status of opera to create an image of the com­pany

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The ­music world and the scene at home merge in this 1915 Victor ad in the Saturday Eve­ning Post. “What a coincidence! That Caruso rec­ord you just played on the Victrola . . .” (Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.)

and its ­music as “high class” by establishing the Red Seal line of rec­ords.41 Its roster of Red Seal artists, including luminaries such as Adelina Patti and Nellie Melba, established its rec­ords as products of taste, worthy and essential for any listener hoping to achieve genteel, middle-­class status. In this, its ­music helped create the space for “opera at home,” establishing the parlor as a site of musical consumption and ­music scene production.42



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 47

The Red Seal line launched Victor to the top of the recorded ­music business. Even if the Red Seal line only accounted for a fraction of the sales, it solidified Victor’s image, by allowing Victor into the sanctified space of the middle-­class home. “The Victor strategy for selling opera rec­ords,” the historian Marsha Siefert has shown, “domesticated opera’s appeal and demo­ cratized its accessibility without destroying its value as a mark of ‘distinction.’ ”43 Further, as the historian Jacques Barzun long ago noted, “This mechanical civilization of ours has performed a miracle . . . ​it has, by mechanical means, brought back to life the ­whole repertory of Western m ­ usic . . . ​it is like the Re­nais­sance rediscovering the classics and holding them fast by means of the printing press. It marks an epoch in Western intellectual history.”44 Victor announced its strategy to its dealers in a full-­page ad in the Talking Machine World, “­There are four Victor pages in this issue. Three show pictures of operatic artists; one shows pictures of popu­lar artists. Three to one—­our business is just the other way, and more, too; but t­ here is good advertising in ­Grand Opera. Are you getting your share?”45 The phonograph had already changed the way listeners engaged with ­music, removing the focal point of the performer onstage and leaving the static horn—­“you can stare into a horn and know that at some vanis­hing point beyond the vis­i­ble concavity ­there is something breathing.”46 When Victor introduced the Victrola in 1906, even that visual cue was removed, leaving only the sounds floating ­free in the domestic interior. The Victrola hid the horn inside Chippendale or Queen Anne–­style cabinets, designed to create an air of class and elegance for the middle-­class home. With the arrival especially of the Victrola, scenes could develop both in the small, enclosed enclaves of the living room and on a mass scale, countrywide as “affective alliances” formed across all borders. Historians note a replacement of amateur ­music making with the consumerist pro­cess of listening to a commodified product by collections of individual listeners.47 Th ­ ese developments may stretch the meaning of the word “scene,” but the most impor­tant f­actor to note is the change in the ways that p­ eople gathered to create and enjoy m ­ usic. Domestic spaces create scenes, too. Through the commercial distribution of sheet ­music and per­for­mances in homes, ­music creators and lovers in ­ usic scene that helped nineteenth-­century Eu­rope created a string chamber m create the social and cultural dimensions of the bourgeoisie.48 Chamber ­music “existed at the intersection of professional and amateur per­for­mance and of serious and recreational ­music making” taking place in “semiprivate”

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and “semipublic” spaces, such as at ­house parties and ­house concerts or exclusive clubs, fraternities, and rented spaces.49 This merging of the public and private environments ­shaped the ­music, as composers wrote for this listening audience of critics and ­music lovers. Printed sheet ­music connected t­ hese communities across time and space.50 As early as the nineteenth ­century, even before the invention of the phonograph, “the basic practices associated with fandom—­idealized connection with a star, strong feelings of memory and nostalgia, use of collecting to develop a sense of self, for example”—­were pre­sent among ­music lovers.51 The Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind was marketed by P. T. Barnum for her 1850–52 tour of the United States by emphasizing her personal qualities, and audiences connected to her in a deeply personal way. In the new world of commercialized leisure, they also felt the visceral rush of “the sheer novelty and power of auditory experience” shared with a mass of ­people.52 ­These first ­music fans in the U.S. built activities to embed the ­music in their lives between the all-­too-­infrequent visiting per­for­mances by keeping diaries, staging amateur productions, collecting sheet ­music, and trying to catch glimpses of the stars outside of the per­for­mance. When the engagement of fans became too passionate and devoted for Victorian sensibilities, middle-­class reformers introduced a new standard of “refinement” for m ­ usic lovers: “ritualized, reverent, intellectual attention to the unfolding of a composition or work . . . ​ removing the spontaneity and showmanship of live per­for­mance that might lead to obsession or spontaneous emotional display.”53 Many of the strategies of the audience-­consumer—­and the accompanying “moral panic” along class, gender, and generational lines—­were already apparent by the mid-­ nineteenth ­century. Sometimes the market and new technologies combined to create the possibility for a domestic scene. The phonograph created opportunities for solo, sexual, even masturbatory, plea­sure that threatened the status quo—­ especially in the hands of w ­ omen.54 The main market for recordings and recording technology in the early de­cades was ­women, both for educational purposes for c­ hildren and domestic spaces as a decorative object.55 The technologies and the marketplace united ­women as consumers and active agents in the creation of the culture of modernity. Early phonography advertising turned audio technology in the domestic ­ omen, as “the phonospace into a gendered means of connecting girls and w graph crossed the boundary between private and public life and in the

The ­music scene comes into the home in “Dancing is delightful to the m ­ usic of the Victrola,” a Victor ad in the Ladies Home Journal, June 1914. (Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.)

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pro­cess gave rise to public discourses that sought to negotiate this new relationship between mass entertainment and domestic space.”56 Home listeners ­were connected through “the illusion of presence” and what Simon Frith calls “the plea­sure of familiarity,” and, by popu­lar discourses, ­women ­were assigned the central role in “negotiating the transition between mass-­ produced entertainment and the sanctity of the home, and m ­ others specifically ­were placed in the m ­ iddle of the conflict.”57 For the middle-­class home, the integration of mass culture into the domestic sphere was complete with the introduction of the Victrola, which changed the phonograph into a decorative item of furniture.58 With the Red Seal line and Victrola, Victor promoted itself as the bastion of elegance, style, civilization, and uplift for ­middle Amer­i­ca, releasing a range of discs by the cream of opera and classical m ­ usic as well as yearly books and cata­logs. But, as its trade ad had said, the Red Seal rec­ords composed only a fraction of their sales.59 Victor also released an extraordinarily wide range of popu­lar and niche ­music, with artists of ­every type traveling from all over the country to rec­ord for Victor. Billy Murray became the best-­selling singer of pop and novelty songs ­after he signed an exclusive contract with Victor in 1909. Other impor­tant singers included Ada Jones and Harry Macdonough. From its earliest days, Victor recorded African American artists, including the famous blackface duo Williams and Walker in 1901, the Fisk Jubilee Singers in Camden in 1909, the Tuskegee Institute Singers in 1914, and Paul Robeson in 1925.60 Victor released what is called the first jazz rec­ord by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917 and the first country rec­ord, Vernon Dalhart’s “The Prisoner’s Song / The Wreck of the Old 97,” in 1924. The Victor Salon Orchestra, led by Nathaniel Shilkret, recorded thousands of sides in a staggering array of styles from dance m ­ usic and jazz to the Red Seal staples of opera and classical.61 The com­pany maintained studios in New York, especially for musicians who performed locally, but recorded from 1907 on at Building No. 15 in Camden, which was remodeled and expanded numerous times over the years to accommodate the increasing recording needs of the com­pany. In 1918 Victor purchased the Camden Trinity Church building to rec­ord large vocal groups and orchestras, most notably the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stowkowski.62 The recording pro­cess was still exotic and mysterious enough that as late as 1918 Victor’s Education Department could publish an extensive behind-­the-­scenes account:

In this 1922 Christmas season advertisement, Victor brings the ­whole world of ­music into your home with the purchase of the Victrola. “Christmas morning and in come the greatest artists!” (Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.)

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This article has been published in response to a g­ reat many requests from our readers, who want to know just what happens in the recording auditorium. If you yourself came to Camden to make a rec­ord your experience would be about as follows: As you stepped from the elevator into the reception room, you would, first of all, feel the keen thrust of stage fright. Musical tradition? The place fairly reeks with it. It i­sn’t so much that you feel the presence of all the truly g­ reat artists of our generation. That, of course, goes without saying, but t­ here’s a slightly uncanny feeling. You can never quite forget that ­here, perched high on the banks of the Delaware, the soul of a singer is caught in some glorious moment of achievement and crystallized on a disc for the sake of all the world—­the world of to-­day and of all the successive tomorrows. In due time you would find yourself confronting the horn in the recording auditorium, with a ­whole big orchestra grouped about you, but it would be arranged like no other orchestra you ever saw. Just what kind of a horn you would sing into, and just how or where the orchestra would be grouped, would depend a good deal on you and on what you ­were ­going to sing or play—­anyway, you know, we c­ an’t tell too many tales out of school. First, you would rehearse your song complete with the orchestra. Not once only, but two or three times, or even more, if necessary, to get your voice wholly en rapport with its orchestra accompaniment. ­There would very likely be some shifting about of instruments or groups of instruments in the orchestra, and when the conductor was well satisfied you would sing into the horn a short test section of your song, with accompaniment. This is done to see that the desired effect is “registering”—­and then you would be ready for the real ordeal. The operator in the adjoining room would adjust the recording mechanisms, and from that moment ­there would be dead silence in the auditorium. You would watch the face of the operator looking at you through a tiny win­dow— or you would watch for a flash from a tiny electric light. You might hear your own heart beat, but you would hear nothing ­else, till, at the signal, the downsweep of the conductor’s baton let loose the flood of sound. Then you would sing, and you would try to sing as you never sang before, ­because you would know that not one audience alone, but all the world might hear your song. The song finished, the same dead silence would grip the room again u­ ntil the recording mechanism was s­ topped and the operator so informed you with



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 53

Victor Rec­ords acoustic recording session, Studio 1 on the seventh floor of Victor Building No. 15, 1925. (Courtesy of Mark Berresford Rare Rec­ords.)

a smile and a nod. And then, as you passed out of the auditorium, the orchestra might shower you with applause, or—it might not.63

The account failed to mention that everyday at closing time, the Victor Camden factory whistle would ring out, interrupting and ruining what­ever recording was currently in pro­cess.64 A series of events in the 1920s contributed to the eventual end of the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany. The acoustic era of sound recording for phonograph rec­ords was drawing to a close. First came the challenge from radio, which dampened rec­ord sales in the early 1920s. Families began to purchase radio receivers instead of phonographs, especially with the introduction of a product line from the Radio Corporation of Amer­i­ca (RCA) in 1924. The following year, Victor signed a deal with RCA to include radio receivers in their Victrola cabinets, but the com­pany could not compete in rec­ord sales with the f­ree m ­ usic offered over the radio.65 The recording pro­cess underwent a revolutionary shift in 1925, as well, with the introduction of the new

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Victor Rec­ords electric recording session, Studio 1 on the seventh floor of Victor Building No. 15, 1925. (Courtesy of Mark Berresford Rare Rec­ords.)

pro­cess of electrical recording. Victor signed a licensing deal with Western Electric, the Camden studios ­were converted to electrical recording, and the era of singing into a cone came to an abrupt end. Victor began to rerelease old rec­ords and rerecord old stars for its new line of “electrically recorded” “Orthophonic” recordings. The com­pany sought new lines of income and cast its talent search wider and wider. From the very beginning, rec­ord companies had searched high and low for any kind of ­music and talent that might turn a profit—­aware that quality sells, but so does novelty. By the 1920s, the business was discovering many dif­fer­ent types of ­music, but usually in niches—­smaller market segments that ­ usic occasionally served up a breakout hit. The birth of what we call country m occurred through the auspices of Victor rec­ords in the 1920s, with many of the key sessions taking place in Camden. The man most responsible, Ralph Peer, came from Okeh Rec­ords to Victor, where he became a pioneering A&R man, transforming the industry and the world of American ­music. Ralph Peer was born in In­de­pen­dence, Missouri, in 1892 during that initial period of the explosion of popu­lar culture and recorded m ­ usic. His f­ ather



The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 55

worked as a salesman and machinist for the sewing machine and phonograph industries, eventually opening his own shop Peer Supply Com­pany, which sold phonographs and the latest rec­ords. Ralph was exposed from an early age to both the recording business and the vibrant social world of the m ­ usic halls in In­de­pen­dence and Kansas City, and eventually worked as a shipping clerk for Columbia Rec­ords as a teenager and settled into full-­time employment in sales t­ here a­ fter graduating from high school in 1909.66 Traveling the Midwest for the next de­cade as a regional sales rep for Columbia, Peer learned the ropes of sales, marketing, and promotion from the ground up on the local level. ­After World War I, Peer joined the Okeh label of New York’s Otto Heineman Phonograph Supply Com­pany, and moved to East Orange, New Jersey, near the com­pany’s manufacturing plant, where he began to develop a cata­log of American roots ­music. In 1920 Peer presided over “one of the milestone recordings and subsequent marketing breakthroughs in the history of American popu­lar m ­ usic”: the 1920 release of “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds—­the rec­ord that launched a blues craze and proved ­there was a vast market for what came to be called “Race Rec­ords,” ­music performed by and for African Americans.67 At Okeh, Peer began to scour the country for regional ­music to bring to a larger record-­buying audience, including a famous 1923 session in Atlanta where Fiddlin’ John Carson’s ­ usic. recordings launched the genre of hillbilly m When Victor Rec­ords pursued Peer, he responded with an offer that changed the economics of the recorded m ­ usic business; instead of taking a salary, he offered to accept a percentage of the mechanical royalties, a portion of which he passed on to the artists. Peer understood that in a culture of celebrity, ­future profits derived from owner­ship of the rights to the songs, so he, in essence, set himself up as a personal management and publishing com­pany, subcontracting to the label in his search for new talent and new songs.68 And as he discovered talent in his travels across the country, he insisted they bring in their own songs, or traditionals that had been reworked enough to warrant a new copyright. As Victor had created the first international recording celebrity in Caruso, Peer, too, looked for artists who had a personality that would transcend genre. ­ usic, but he was always on the lookout for a He was hired to find hillbilly m breakthrough personality. He found one in Jimmie Rod­gers, who, along with the Car­ter ­Family, emerged from obscurity with the famous Bristol Sessions of 1927, the recording sessions on the Tennessee-­Virginia border that have

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been called the Big Bang of country m ­ usic and, by Johnny Cash, “the single most impor­tant event in the history of country m ­ usic.” Setting up in an empty storefront on Bristol, Tennessee’s main street, Peer recorded dozens of acts over a ­couple weeks, but Rod­gers and the Car­ters brought something new. Peer recalled his own role in the transformation of the rec­ord business and its relationship with the public: “As a pioneer in this field, I perhaps set the pattern which has resulted in a r­ eally tremendous new section of the Amusement Industry. I quickly discovered that ­people buying rec­ords ­were not especially interested in hearing standard or folkloric m ­ usic. What they wanted was something new—­built along the same lines.”69 That line—­“something new—­built along the same lines”—­captures the essence of the popu­lar m ­ usic marketplace and accounts for Peer’s iconic status and success. As folklorists traveled the country and the world trying to capture the past before it slipped away u­ nder the onslaught of modernity—­a task just as understandable, urgent, and valuable as any—­Peer sought to make the old m ­ usic new in order to reach a wide and widening audience. If Caruso’s recordings had made opera demo­cratic, Peer’s productions similarly broadened the appeal of what was previously regional and narrow. Although the categories of race and hillbilly segregated black and white ­music into market niches, they did not do so successfully. From the beginning the genres had crossed racial lines, for both musicians and audiences. In 1929 Victor was bought out by the Radio Corporation of Amer­i­ca. The com­pany would continue to make rec­ords, often impor­tant ones, but now merely as a division in a multinational media conglomerate. Victor had redefined ways that ­people could gather to appreciate ­music. Over the course of the nineteenth ­century, as capitalism and industrialization rewrote the rules of everyday life, the home became a refuge, the “haven in a heartless world” for the growing ­middle class. Within the home, culture and education became bulwarks against the corrosive values of the market­ ere central to the idea of middle-­class uplift, place. Hymns and parlor songs w discipline, and the development of moral character, as families gathered around the piano, then the player piano and the phonograph. Red Seal rec­ ords and the Victrola allowed middle-­class families to appreciate beauty and the sacred as well as to interact with the modern world on their own terms. The phonograph became a piece of furniture designed to fit in with the other furnishings of the parlor, integrating the artifacts of mass culture into the home. Domestic space could be a safe place to invite the commercial world

Upon Caruso’s death, Victor reminds the world that ­because of the Victrola, his voice ­will “live through all the ages.” “Caruso Immortalized,” 1921 ad in National Geographic. (Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.)

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in, and the other popu­lar ­music of the period, from ragtime to jazz to hillbilly ­were just as likely to find an audience in the home. Public and private mixed in ways that created, si­mul­ta­neously, f­ amily and community “scenes” of enjoyment of m ­ usic on the personal level, and national “scenes” based on shared tastes and market niches.70

3 • JA ZZ AT THE CLIFFSIDE The Studios of Rudy Van Gelder

Hey Rudy, put this on the rec­ord—­all of it. —­Miles Davis, Christmas Eve, 1954

In the years ­after World War II, a young generation of jazz musicians created new complex, up-­tempo, and strangely syncopated sounds that came to be called bebop. Developed in late night jam sessions ­after the regular big-­band gigs, this new ­music took the sound and style of jazz in new directions. Jazz had always provided the ideal setting for a ­music scene, and some of the best insights into the making of scenes come from the jazz world. ­Music scenes evolve. Looking at how they change over time gives us a way to explore the relationships between the individual, the community, and the larger society. For example, the story of bebop is often told through the emergence of creative breakthroughs by a new breed of innovator. Bebop musicians began their ­careers as working musicians within a structured system that ­shaped the way they worked. The adoption of new forms of ­music making transformed social and business relations, not just their cultural output.1 And that new form of ­music was not simply a result of “genius” or “inspiration,” but also of economic and social forces that indirectly encouraged new forms of production and distribution of jazz.2 Musical scenes are built on the intellectual and creative ­labor of writers, artists, performers, producers, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs, as well as fans, and that creativity is what brings every­one out and together.3 As Howard Becker writes, “art worlds rather than artists make art.”4 59

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Bebop emerged from the “distinctively cloistered ambience” of late night jam sessions of musicians playing to jazz aficionados, who appreciated and purchased the ­music in the clubs and on the rec­ords.5 This new small-­combo jazz created a new aesthetic within the context of the structures of the jazz business. Vari­ous f­ actors ­shaped bebop: small clubs that could not fit or pay the large orchestras, after-­hours loosening of club rules, the opening up of the market for in­de­pen­dent rec­ord companies ­after the end of the ­union ban on recording in 1943, and the racial in­equality of the existing m ­ usic industry also pushed young musicians ­toward the jam session for their artistic aspirations.6 It was within ­these jam sessions, with their own codes, developed for very specific historical reasons, that a new m ­ usic emerged.7 The jam session—­what Ralph Ellison called “the jazzman’s true acad­ emy”8—­offers a type of subculture or scene, operating according to codes and rules that are opaque to the outsider, in an atmosphere that was never intended to be public.9 Not all of what created a scene was based on a sense of community-­as-­unity, as jams ­were often competitive and hierarchical.10 Clubs ­were nominally open to all, but resources, especially time, ­were finite, since even the long night contained only so many hours ­until dawn.11 But as Scott DeVeaux remarks of a famous 1941 session at Minton’s in New York that happened to be recorded, the interplay between the guitarist Charlie Christian and the drummer Kenny Clarke playing “Topsy”: “This kind of telepathic empathy happens more often than one might think in jam sessions.”12 ­These jam sessions provided the basis for jazz scenes centered in clubs in cities. The improvisational nature of the ­music made recording seem to be an afterthought, an inessential, possibly fruitless attempt to capture something that was an ephemeral, maybe even transcendent, experience. Just across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey from upper Manhattan, an audio engineer created the space for a scene where jazz musicians came to unleash their most unrestrained per­for­mances to be captured for eternity. Although jazz is known as the most “live” of musical genres, Rudy Van Gelder’s studio became a “holy site of jazz m ­ usic” for jazz musicians from the 1950s into the twenty-­first ­century.13 In 1946 Rudy Van Gelder created his first recording studio in his parents’ ­house in the sleepy suburb of Hackensack. In fact, when his parents w ­ ere designing the h­ ouse on their newly purchased lot at 25 Prospect Ave­nue, Rudy intervened to persuade his ­father to include a sound booth off the living room where Rudy could install his first recording equipment. “The archi-



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tect made the living room ceiling higher than the rest of the ­house, which created ideal acoustics for recording,” Van Gelder remembered.14 “When my ­father was having the blueprints done, I asked him if I could have a control room with a double glass win­dow next to the living room. I wanted to perfect the techniques of con­temporary ­music recording.”15 ­After college, Rudy began a ­career as an optometrist, but spent ­every after­noon tinkering with technology and sounds in his home studio. Like Edison at his West Orange laboratory, Van Gelder took a technician’s interest in the sounds, caring as much for the tools as the ­music. But unlike Edison, Van Gelder became the premier recording engineer of his era, capturing the sound of the new jazz as no one ­else could.16 By the end of his life, he had recorded thousands of a­ lbums, many of the most famous in jazz history, and received all the major awards in his field, including a Trustees Award from the Grammys (National Acad­emy of Recording Arts and Sciences) in 2012, honoring his lifetime contribution. The National Endowment for the Arts praised Van Gelder as “considered by many the greatest recording engineer in jazz” who “recorded practically e­ very major jazz musician of the 1950s and 1960s.”17 On after­noons, ­after leaving his optometry office in Teaneck, Van Gelder brought jazz musicians into his parents’ living room while he experimented with recording techniques, microphones, and the new magnetic recording tape. “I was examining eyes on Monday and recording Miles Davis on Wednesday,” Van Gelder claimed.18 Van Gelder’s interest in recording developed early. At age seven, in 1931, he purchased, from the back of a comic book, a $2.98 “Home Recorder,” a machine not all that far removed from the early cylinders of Edison and Victor, though it e­ tched the sound into grooves on a plastic disc. “First of all, you got a 78 rpm rec­ord with blank grooves spiraling in t­ owards the center,” Van Gelder remembered. And then you put the disc on the turntable and then you put this device on top, which tracked the groove. And then along with that you get a l­ ittle disc about four inches in dia­meter with a sort of a cardboard lacquer coating and ­there was a device that engraved a groove in that ­little disc. And you talked ­really loud like I’m ­doing now into the machine and you could hear yourself. I remember I put it up against a radio speaker, turned the radio up real loud, and sure enough I was recording m ­ usic—­$3 machine. That’s how I started. (chuckles).

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Soon, Van Gelder was ordering parts from radio suppliers to develop his own recording equipment.19 A fan of jazz since his youth, his interest was more in the sound itself.20 Van Gelder had listened to jazz on the radio and visited clubs for per­for­ mances, but his real love was the studio. “I was interested in m ­ usic, but ­parallel to that when I was a young teenager I was also interested in ham radio. The technical part of that is building transmitters, receivers and audio amplifiers. It was my interest in m ­ usic, as well as the technical aspects of radio, which brought me to sound recording,” Van Gelder recalled.21 On his trips to the clubs of New York City, he would also go downtown to buy electronic gear—­mixers, amplifiers, microphones, and so on. Visiting a radio station while attending college, “A power­ful feeling swept over me. The ­music, the equipment’s design, the seriousness of the place—­I knew I wanted to spend my ­career in that type of environment . . . ​I loved the imposing look of the electronic equipment and how every­thing was meticulously set up. Radio equipment looks very serious. I also loved the equipment’s design, which was modern and urgent. Back then the equipment’s look reflected the excitement of m ­ usic and the airwaves.”22 He clearly delighted in the design and formalism of the setting, but in pursuit of the same excitement that the musicians he was recording ­were creating with their tools. He also understood how the technologies that ­were developing could better serve the musician and the listener—so that his studio became the node of intersection for the creative artist and the jazz fan who would ultimately purchase the vinyl product. “I was focused on making sure I got what producers needed,” he told an interviewer. “The ­music w ­ asn’t top of mind. The technology and sound ­were.”23 His studio—­built around his love of formal machine design—­became the place where sounds ­were captured to nurture the ­human soul. As Van Gelder recalled, “My ambition from the start as a recording engineer was to capture and reproduce the ­music better than other engineers at the time. I was driven to make the m ­ usic sound closer to the way it sounded in the studio. This was a constant strug­gle—to get electronics to accurately capture the h­ uman spirit.”24 It is striking how even his technological perfectionism had an aesthetic dimension—­his love of the machines was as much about the look and feel as the sound they captured and produced. He developed a reputation as prickly about his beloved instruments, wearing gloves and scolding anyone



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who dared touch a microphone.25 But it was not merely a technician’s perfectionism: “The microphones. I loved the way they looked. They w ­ ere a symbol of every­thing I loved about recording studios. I loved all microphones. It was almost an obsession. When I’d see photos of jazz musicians recording or performing, I found myself looking at the mikes, not them. The microphone became every­thing for me.”26 This love of the mics was motivated also by a driving ambition to capture what the h­ uman ear could hear but could not yet be faithfully produced on vinyl. The first barrier was the mics. “In ­those days—­even into the 1950s—­ the quality of the equipment and rec­ords themselves c­ ouldn’t keep up with what musicians ­were playing live,” Van Gelder recalled. “I had to experiment to find the best way to set up musicians and microphones so the sound would be as warm and as realistic as pos­si­ble.”27 Van Gelder was one of the first in the United States to use Neumann condenser microphones, which ­were much more sensitive than any previously available and created a warmer sound.28 Van Gelder was also one of the first engineers to experiment with the new magnetic tape produced by Ampex, switching from his early efforts recording direct to aluminum lacquer-­coated discs (that w ­ ere reproduced onto 78 rpm) for local musicians and singers. “Tape was more cost efficient and revolutionary for most engineers in the late ’40s and early ’50s,” Van Gelder recalled. “It required a w ­ hole new series of techniques and disciplines as an engineer. I had always known what I wanted to hear, but the gear was too ­limited. With tape, I was able to move closer to my vision.”29 Even the tape recording had its visual aesthetic for Van Gelder: “I felt it had a good chance of producing better results. And I fell in love with the design of the Ampex recorders. They ­were the most beautiful machines I had ever seen. Not a bolt or screw or anything vis­i­ble. Just aluminum castings wrapped by stainless steel.”30 Van Gelder ­adopted tape even before Ampex had a ser­vice department, experimenting and developing his own “techniques and reflexes” as the machines ­were still inconsistent and unstable, even primitive.31 Quickly, Van Gelder became proficient with the razor blade, splicing parts of two dif­fer­ent takes together seamlessly.32 Even with its flaws, tape was ideally suited to the new jazz that was developing in the postwar years. “The beauty of tape is that it allowed for longer recording and mastering times. Three minutes had been the average duration ­ inutes. of a 78-­rpm recording. But a single reel of 15ips magnetic tape lasted 30 m

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Rudy Van Gelder at the Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey, in the mid-1950s. (Photo by Francis Wolff, courtesy of Mosaic Rec­ords.)

Tape also allowed for cost-­efficient stop-­and-­start recording. Plus, we could splice out bad notes or per­for­mances and exchange them for better ones, ­doing rather extensive editing.”33 When rec­ord companies a­ dopted the new 33 1/3 LP (long playing) rec­ord format in 1948, the new magnetic tape became essential for recording, especially when ­these new twelve-­inch discs allowed for over twenty minutes per side. In 1952 Van Gelder’s studio came to the attention of the jazz world when Alfred Lion of Blue Note Rec­ords in New York heard a Van Gelder recording and asked his engineer to re-­create the sound. Van Gelder remembered, “The guy told him he d­ idn’t know how, and urged Alfred to see the person who had recorded the originals. So he did.”34 Around the same time the owner of Prestige Rec­ords, Bob Weinstock, asked his staff producer and liner-­



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note writer Ira Gitler to check out Van Gelder and his studio.35 Other small jazz labels soon followed. Van Gelder appreciated aligning himself with the upstart labels that ­were producing a new and challenging form of ­music. “During that time t­ here ­were only three major rec­ord companies: RCA, Columbia and Decca,” Van Gelder recalled. “Bob Weinstock, a ­music lover like myself, wanted to rec­ord ­albums that could compete sound-­wise with the majors. I felt that now I had a mission: to allow small private labels to sound as good as the three big labels.”36 Soon Blue Note, Prestige, Savoy, Impulse! and other labels began to book time at his studio. ­After the first Van Gelder-­engineered ­albums on Blue Note came out—­Gil Mellé’s New F ­ aces, New Sounds and the live A Night at Birdland by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, demand for Van Gelder soared. “I was intensively or­ga­nized, so I was able to engineer sessions comparatively faster than most other studios in New York,” Van Gelder recalled. “I had to be organized—­I continued to work as an optometrist throughout my recordings in the 1950s. The results of my sessions always sounded more distinct and dimensional than many other sessions being done then in New York, even in mono. . . . ​Recording was always on my mind. I would spend hours setting up for the next day’s recording session, carefully placing the cables, microphones and chairs for the musicians. When the producer and musicians arrived, we would begin recording almost immediately.”37 Continuing his work as an optometrist by day, and investing his income in new recording equipment, Van Gelder booked dif­fer­ent labels for dif­fer­ ent nights of the week, experimenting and learning as he developed his techniques. “Alfred [Lion] was rigid about how he wanted Blue Note rec­ords to sound,” Van Gelder recalled. “But Bob Weinstock of Prestige was more easygoing, so I’d experiment on his dates and use what I learned on the Blue Note sessions.”38 Weinstock kept a standing Friday after­noon booking for Prestige sessions, and a “small motorcade would gather outside the Prestige office at 446 West 50th Street and travel over to Jersey”—­often for lengthy jam sessions with minimal charts.39 Alfred Lion put Van Gelder “on his team” and from then on Van Gelder had a steady stream of work.40 The space became so iconic so quickly that in 1954 the pianist Thelonious Monk composed and recorded a  tribute to Van Gelder’s home studio, “Hackensack.” Musicians enjoyed the experience of recording in the modified living room. “Musicians liked the intimacy of the relatively small space,” notes the jazz historian

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Dan Skea, “being physically close to one another helped the rhythm sections jell. At the same time, the warm, dry sound of the room made it easier to play in than some larger commercial spaces where reverberations bouncing off walls could disturb sonic cohesiveness.”41 To accommodate the daily flow of traffic, his parents added a side entrance to the ­house, but other­wise accepted that their ­house was a recording studio by night, and “only once my ­mother left me a note asking me to do a better job tidying up.”42 Van Gelder quickly established himself, by word of mouth, as someone with a unique ability to capture the sound of jazz in ways that no one e­ lse could—­“techniques to reproduce jazz’s salon intimacy on vinyl”—­and his studio became a destination for jazz musicians establishing their legends.43 Like Edison and ­others before him, he was a relentless experimenter, and as guarded with his discoveries, so that, to this day, many of his techniques remain secret. As the jazz journalist Marc Myers notes, “Back when setting up microphones in recording studios was fairly standard and engineers w ­ ere ­there merely to make sure every­thing was plugged in and that nothing went awry with equipment or recording levels, Rudy quickly became an improviser in his own right. For Rudy, microphones had distinct characteristics and prop­ ere placed in unusual studio locations or wrapped in erties, and when they w strange ways, they could produce a cozier, more realistic result.”44 Never part of the jazz tribe, Van Gelder ruled his space, wearing gloves to ­handle the microphones and not allowing anyone ­else to touch the equipment.45 The results ­were singular—­each ­album “sounded rich in an organic, understated way, as if all of the musicians had recorded in a small storage closet lined with suede. None of the musicians sounded distant or faint, while session leaders ­were distinct but never sonically overwhelming.”46 Van Gelder was responsible for what would come to be known as the signature “Blue Note Sound.” The New Yorker critic Richard Brody concluded, “He’s not the only distinctive sound artist of modern jazz, but he’s the one whose sound defines a sensibility and an era. It’s hot and warm and also cool, but never cold.”47 Van Gelder was notoriously circumspect about sharing any of his tools or techniques, refusing throughout his life to answer questions directly about his methods. As he himself understood, “No one e­ lse was producing t­ hose kinds of results on equipment that was available at the time.”48 It is not too much to claim that Van Gelder was a jazz artist.



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The jazz critic Nate Chinen noted of Van Gelder, “So much of what he did was intangible. You hear it, you feel it, but his signature was ­etched in invisible ink. What is it, exactly, that ­you’re listening for? Naturalism? Warmth? The sound of a room?”49 Brody, in an assessment of Van Gelder’s influence, concluded, Van Gelder’s “own audacity fused with that of the artists at work to render the ­music with a sense of physical impact and deep psychological resonance. He approached technique with an artistic sensibility, even in its very inner-­driven practicalities.”50 Brody captures both the delicacy and the power of Van Gelder’s work as well as anyone: Van Gelder brings out the sharp edge of a horn’s tone, a burr or a buzz or a glare, that retains the connection to the column of air from the musician’s body, the pressure of the lips. His piano sound tends to the percussive, achieving a relatively thin but tactile plangency. And he’s a master of letting the power of drums come through without overwhelming the texture of the ensemble. That’s where the warmth and the cool come in: his live mixes capture a sense of the group— he lets each individual voice sound prominent while maintaining a sense of the musicians’ proximity, of the intertwining of their sounds and, above all, of their sensibilities. . . . ​In Van Gelder’s hands, even the most furious ­music maintains a refined clarity, a center of calm assurance amid the turbulence.51

What comes through from all the accolades is that the sound developed from a unique mixture of Van Gelder’s personality, professionalism, and technique. Van Gelder paid par­tic­ul­ar attention to the placement of the microphones, developing dif­fer­ent strategies for each instrument. For the piano, Billy Taylor helped him discover a method to capture the sound: I took some [Art] Tatum rec­ords out and some other piano rec­ords that I thought would help me explain what I was trying to get at. And we listened to them. He was the first engineer that I worked with who was that sensitive, and ­really just took time and cared about mike placement and all that sort of stuff. And I was just knocked out b­ ecause ­here was a guy who was willing to take that kind of time on his own to listen and to, you know, say “Well, okay—­play something.” And I’d play something, and he’d put a mike in one place and go back in the other room. And then say, “Okay, let’s try that again,” and put a mike somewhere ­else. I mean, he was r­ eally just kind of making some comparisons and coming up with what he thought would get closest to what we w ­ ere talking

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about. And he actually captured the sound that I was looking for, and ultimately that seemed, to my ear, to be the basis of his piano sound.52

The musician Walter Becker claimed that he was always looking for the Van Gelder sound when recording his band Steely Dan: “The t­ hing about Rudy’s recording technique is how he got each instrument to sound intimate, with musicians playing close to the microphones. The way he recorded, you had the continuity of lines and the fatness of tone that made solos jump out. We wanted all of our recordings to sound that way.”53 Van Gelder himself spoke about what he was looking for. “When ­people talk about my ­albums, they often say the ­music has ‘space.’ I tried to reproduce a sense of space in the overall sound picture,” Van Gelder once said. “I used specific microphones located in places that allowed the musicians to sound as though they ­were playing from dif­fer­ent locations in the room, which in real­ity they ­were. This created a sensation of dimension and depth.”54 This job was particularly difficult for jazz. With classical or popu­lar m ­ usic, the score dictates what w ­ ill be played, so the engineer can plan ahead for changes in sound levels. It is not simply a m ­ atter of microphone placement. As the jazz historian Dan Skea points out, “­Because improvisation is such an essential part of the art form” in jazz, “where the playing of soloists and the interaction of the rhythm section is spontaneously improvised, volume levels change dramatically and unpredictably with the emotion of the moment.”55 And each take was dif­fer­ent. Michael Cuscana, the jazz producer and leading discographer of Blue Note Rec­ords, concludes: Rudy recorded at a very high level in terms of decibels, or dB. If you listen to a Rudy Van Gelder 1955 tape, he filled it with m ­ usic. He was always on the verge of distorting, but he never did. If you listen to another ’55 tape from ­Mercury or Columbia, you’ll hear a lot of tape hiss b­ ecause the engineers recorded at a cautious, lower level. Rudy got players like Art Blakey to sound like they did if you had heard them in a club. He also had a way of capturing drums. Rudy engineered a McCoy Tyner rec­ord on Impulse called “Reaching Forth.” If you put the rec­ord on and listen to it, you can hear ­every detail of Roy Haynes’s drums, ­every piece of the drum kit. It’s all just beautiful. If you open up the jacket in the a­ lbum, t­ here’s a big picture of Roy Haynes and Henry Grimes in Rudy’s studio. In front of the drum



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kit, ­there are just two mics on stands aimed at the level of the mounted tomtom, and that’s all he used. But he was able to capture all this stuff. How he did it, I ­don’t know, but he just was the best at what he did.56

Each instrument provided special challenges for recording, but none more than drums. And Van Gelder was able to do something no one e­ lse could at the time. “Before Rudy, drums w ­ ere mushy, pianos sounded dull, and the bass . . . ​ often missing in action,” conclude the historians Jim Cogan and William Clark. “­After Rudy, drums snapped and cymbals sizzled, pianos cooked and crackled, and the bass held the bottom like a swingin’ ship’s anchor. Modern jazz had a modern sound—­and it was coming out of a living room in Hackensack.57

The drummer Kenny Clarke, recording with Tommy Flanagan (right), at the “Introducing Kenny Burrell” session, Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey, May 29, 1956. (Photo by Francis Wolff, courtesy of Mosaic Rec­ords.)

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Van Gelder’s skill was most famously captured in the “Blue Note Sound,” but it is worth comparing Blue Note with Prestige to truly realize how Van Gelder contributed to the dif­fer­ent sounds of modern jazz in the 1950s and 1960s. “Rudy had a good ear for jazz, you know, and a good feeling. He ­wasn’t just a man who sat around the controls and looked at the ­needles,” remembered Alfred Lion, Blue Note’s founder. He listened, you know . . . ​­every time I listened to the rec­ords from bigger companies, the drum sound was kind of pushed in the back. You d­ idn’t hear the details. And Rudy and I discussed it all the time, and I said, “I would like to hear the details, I’d like to hear the sock cymbal. You know, that . . . ​[snaps fin­ ­ eally get this out, you know, gers] . . . ​and, cymbals on the top, and the ring. R and make it lively.” Rudy mastered that a­ fter a while, and very well. And so we went from instrument to instrument—­the bass—­and we developed a sound which was the Blue Note sound. The rec­ords sound dif­fer­ent from other p­ eople’s.58

Lion recognized the unique value that Van Gelder brought: “Rudy’s a very knowledgeable and soulful person. He’s not like some—­you know they call them ‘needle noses’—­they just look at the needle on the meter.”59 Lion was known to be exacting, but he also had complete faith in Van Gelder’s abilities. Van Gelder, characteristically, never claimed credit, always emphasizing Lion’s role: “Alfred knew exactly what he wanted to hear. He communicated it to me and I got it for him technically. He was amazing in what he heard and how he would patiently draw it out of me. He gave me confidence and support in any situation.”60 Van Gelder was also careful to include Lion’s partner Francis Wolff in the equation. Wolff’s photo­graphs are well-­known, but Van Gelder also remembered him as “very much involved in the musical decisions at ­every session.”61 Lion valued Van Gelder’s contribution from the beginning, telling Audio magazine in 1957, “Rudy is more than an ordinary engineer in that his knowledge of jazz, and the way he applies it to the recording of dif­ fer­ent musicians, puts him, to my mind, in the class of a creative artist.”62 And, of course, it all came back to the two of them working together and with the musicians, as Van Gelder remembered of this work with Lion: He was unique at that time in that he had an idea; he pre-­v isualized or pre-­ oralized his rec­ords. He knew what he wanted before he came to the studio.



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He had a good idea what a rec­ord should sound like, what he wanted it to sound like. He would then bring ­these musicians in, and I considered it was my job to make t­ hese ­people sound the way he thought they should sound. Now I wanna say, that’s within the framework of the musicians themselves, too. ­Really, it’s the way the musicians themselves felt that they wanted to sound. That’s where it ­really begins. It’s not with Alfred, it’s not with any other producer.”63

Bob Weinstock of Prestige Rec­ords took a far dif­fer­ent approach to recording, but still found a home at Van Gelder studios. Living in Teaneck, one day he saw a sign for “Rudy Van Gelder, Optometrist.” “I went in t­ here and I said, ‘Are you Rudy Van Gelder that does the Blue Note rec­ords?’ ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ And we talked, you know. And I asked, ‘Are you allowed to do other ­people’s rec­ords besides Blue Note’s?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m not exclusive to them. I have time open.’ And I booked a session with him. A Miles [Davis] session was the first one I did.”64 Weinstock famously had a laid-­back demeanor and business approach. Bob Porter, the producer of Prestige Rec­ ords, once quipped that the difference between Blue Note and Prestige was “two days of rehearsal.”65 And that was actually accurate, as Lion paid his musicians for rehearsals, and even included buffet and other professional accessories for the sessions. But Van Gelder objected to the characterization. “­There are ­people who say that the difference between Blue Note and P ­ restige is rehearsal,” Van Gelder complained. “That’s just glib. That’s bullshit. That’s not even a fair way to put it. It resulted in a lot of my favorite recordings. You know, t­ hose Miles [Davis] Prestige t­ hings . . . ​they ­can’t hurt t­ hose ­things. It’s ­really one of the most gratifying ­things I’ve done, the fact that ­people can hear ­those. It’s ­really good.”66 Even though the procedure was dif­fer­ent, Van Gelder approached ­every session with the same level of seriousness and creativity. Although the Blue Note sessions w ­ ere more rigorous and exacting—­and thus clearly significant to Van Gelder even at the time—­“the Prestige recordings of Miles Davis, the Red Garland with Philly Joe Jones, the Jackie McLean and Art Taylor, the  early Coltrane—­sessions like that—­turned out to be equally if not more impor­tant.”67 The combination of the space and Rudy’s meticulous attention to the pro­ cess created an ambience in the room that led to unfettered per­for­mances for Prestige. In a posthumous appreciation of Van Gelder, the jazz critic Nate Chinen noted, “ ‘Ready, Rudy?’ was something jazz musicians routinely said

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from Mr. Van Gelder’s studio floor, and the phrase became a kind of an in-­ joke, the title of a tune by Duke Pearson. H ­ ere, on the first track of ‘Relaxin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet,’ we hear a less standard but more famous bit of studio chatter, as Davis rasps, ‘I’ll play it and tell you what it is l­ater.’ That offhandedness provides much of the charm of t­ hese sessions, for Prestige; Coltrane even begins his tenor-­saxophone solo away from the microphone, as if stepping up to the plate.”68 It is worth noting that key to all this—­beyond the technologies and skills of Van Gelder as an engineer—­was the unique atmosphere that he created in his home studio. “When they came to the Hackensack studio for a session, they felt appreciated, not merely tolerated,” Dan Skea concluded. “Van Gelder spoke the jazz players’ language and treated the m ­ usic they created as high art.”69 Van Gelder himself understood that though by temperament he was the very opposite of jazz musicians, he connected with them in some fundamental way. “I sort of had a rapport with the musician, and I tried to understand what they ­were trying to do. I always felt that jazz musicians should be treated in a way that was a l­ittle more as if it w ­ ere a major effort than the way they had been treated in other places.”70 While musicians loved to tease and joke about how uptight Van Gelder could be about food in the studio and the absolute ban on smoking in the control room, they felt respected and welcome. The saxophonist Johnny Griffin recalled, “He’d say, ‘Oh! ­Don’t bring them hamburgers in my living room! ­Don’t spill the drinks on the rug!’ We’d drive him crazy—­can you imagine all of us jazz musicians in his h­ ouse?”71 McCoy Tyner similarly remembers Van Gelder’s fastidiousness, but understood, as well, that “he had ­things to do.”72 But Van Gelder appreciated the musicians: “I think I had a good rapport with all of them. They trusted me. And they still do. . . . ​Musicians would come to me, not all, but often enough that t­ hey’d say, ‘That’s just the way I want to sound’ and believe me when they said that—­and often—­that stuck with me and I said, ‘That’s exactly—­that’s my goal.’ ”73 Perhaps the most famous Hackensack session occurred on Christmas Eve in 1954, when Miles Davis convened Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Thelonious Monk on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums to ­ iants. The session was famous as much for its rec­ord as the Modern Jazz G extraordinary product as for the friction between Davis and Monk, who had been included by Bob Weinstock against Davis’s wishes, most particularly



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Miles Davis recording at “Miles Davis Quartet” session, Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey, March 6, 1954. (Photo by Francis Wolff, courtesy of Mosaic Rec­ords.)

over ­whether Monk could continue playing his piano during Miles’s trumpet solos. Van Gelder had considerable experience recording t­ hese artists, especially Miles. It was Van Gelder who had first captured and created the recorded version of Davis, a “remote-­sounding presence, with a modest amount of echo.”74 “Rudy had a way of capturing horns the way they sounded,” said Michael Cuscuna, the reissue producer of numerous Van Gelder-­engineered recordings. “He was committed to getting as close to the impact of a ‘live’ per­for­mance as pos­si­ble in his studio—­and he did it.”75 According to Skea, for Miles Davis’s muted trumpet, Van Gelder was able to “rec­ord with a Telefunken microphone almost touching the metallic Harmon mute, thereby

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permitting Miles to achieve a g­ reat intensity without having to play at a high volume level. The piercing, icy-­blue tone Davis was thus able to achieve became one of the trumpeter’s trademarks.”76 The result is the Miles Davis that has been passed down to us—­“a sound that transcends real­ity and the limits of quantum physics.”77 The Modern Jazz Quartet had evolved from the Milt Jackson Quartet, and Jackson on the vibraphone with Heath on bass and Clarke on drums. All had recorded multiple sessions with Van Gelder. The drummer Kenny Clarke was such a regular that Van Gelder named his spot, right b­ ehind the keyboard of the piano, “Klook’s Corner,” a­ fter his nickname. “I benefited from his expertise,” Van Gelder remembered. “He was so subtle, delicate, musical. He knew just how to hit the drums to make them sound beautiful and make life g­ reat for me.”78 As with Davis, Van Gelder was the first to bring Clarke’s drums to life on rec­ord, capturing the cymbals cleanly and revealing the “intricacies of Clarke’s best brush work.”79 Christmas season was a good time for recording, as musicians w ­ ere ­eager to gather the extra paydays. Apparently, however, Monk was not all that excited to be away from his ­family on this night. Monk had performed as a sideman, participating in the jam session environment, on numerous recordings at the studio. But he was not thrilled with once again being relegated to sideman status for a Prestige session. For his part, Davis had to be coerced into accepting Monk for the gig. Weinstock insisted, resisting Davis’s re­sis­ tance. While he had a famously laid-­back attitude ­toward the sessions themselves, Weinstock was not without vision. It was not apathy that motivated Weinstock, but a dif­fer­ent conception of how to draw the best per­for­mances. Originally he had no intention of including a Monk composition—­the source of ­future royalties for the pianist—in the session. Only a­ fter Ira Gitler intervened did Weinstock agree to the inclusion of a tune by Monk, who was already well-­established as a composer. According to the biographer Robin D. G. Kelley, Monk also carried into the session a touch of jealousy of Milt Jackson, another artist who seemed to be succeeding financially while Monk’s ­career failed to take off. “So when Monk arrived at Van Gelder’s studio around two in the after­noon,” writes Kelley, “he was already a bit agitated.”80 Beginning in mid-­afternoon, the session stretched into the eve­ning without much happening. Ira Gitler remembered that “­things w ­ ere not serene when I left ­towards the dinner hour . . . ​and not much had been accom-



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plished.”81 A ­couple of solid takes of Jackson’s “Bag’s Groove” made it to tape, with the tension producing a Monk solo that the critic André Hodier described as “one of the purest moments of beauty in the history of jazz.”82 Following that, the group managed satisfactory takes of Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” and Davis’s own “Swing Spring.” Tensions came to a head during the first take of “The Man I Love.” We hear it on the rec­ord. Jackson starts on the vibraphone. The playing stops. Monk says, “When am I supposed to come in, man?” One of the group is heard to interject, “Oh, no . . . ​Man, the cat’s cuttin’ hisself.” Monk replies, “I wanna know when to come in, man. ­Can’t I start too? Every­body ­else . . .” Davis shuts it down and starts it up: “Shh . . . ​Shh . . . ​Hey Rudy, put this on the rec­ord—­ ALL of it.”83 Jackson starts up again, and they launch into the number. What followed was quickly blown into legend—­with the most common tale involving fists flying. But no one at the scene confirms that. Years ­later, Van Gelder himself told the tale a ­couple of times, concluding, “It ­really ­wasn’t a blow-up, just a ­simple incident.”84 It is clear that Davis asked Monk not to play—­but to lay out—­during his solo, and that Monk was none too pleased. Van Gelder recalled that some of the confusion came from the fact that the two musicians made differing requests to him. While he was adjusting equipment between rehearsal takes, Monk said to him, “­Don’t turn me down ­behind the trumpet solo.” Van Gelder said, “Okay,” and they continued to rehearse the piece.85 Meanwhile, Miles had told Monk to lay out entirely during his solos. Davis respected Monk’s playing, but distrusted his ability to play ­behind horns. Miles said the pianist did not “push the rhythm section . . . ​I just told him to lay out when I was playing, ­because I ­wasn’t comfortable with the way he voiced his changes . . . ​I wanted to hear the rhythm section stroll without a piano sound.”86 ­There is no doubt that Monk behaved aggressively during the next take. ­After the opening melody, as Miles launched into his solo, Monk ­rose his full 6-­foot, 3-­inch frame from his piano and moved over to loom over Miles, who was hunched over his microphone. ­After the take, Miles asked, “What are you d­ oing?” Monk replied, “Well, I d­ on’t have to sit down to lay out!”87 All who tell the tale laugh at that line. In his autobiography, Davis recalls, “When I heard stories ­later saying that me and him was almost about to fight a­ fter I had him lay out while I was playing on ‘Bags’ Groove,’ I was shocked, ­because Monk and I w ­ ere, first, very close, and second, he was too big and strong for

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me to even be thinking about fighting. . . . ​All I did was tell him to lay out when I was playing. My asking him to lay out had something to do with m ­ usic, not friendship. He used to tell cats to lay out himself.”88 Another time Davis emphasized that ­there was not even any argument, even a­ fter the brief exchange caught on tape at the beginning: “If I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face . . . ​then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the mad­house, ­because Monk could have just picked my ­little ass up and thrown me through a wall.”89 Monk confirmed, with a chuckle, “Miles’d got killed if he hit me.” And he l­ater called all the tales of conflict “an invention . . . ​Miles and I ­didn’t have an argument.”90 Bob Weinstock confirmed: “­People say ­there was an argument about Miles not wanting Monk to comp ­behind him. That’s bullshit. Miles ­didn’t want him to comp on one tune. ­There was no hostility, no fighting. I’ve heard that story many times but t­ hose guys had total re­spect for each other.”91 Van Gelder concluded that “Monk was planning something he wanted to play during the solo, and Miles had short-­circuited his plan.”92 When Ira Gitler ran into Kenny Clarke at Minton’s l­ ater that night and asked, “How did it go?” Clarke replied, “ ‘Miles sure is a beautiful cat,’ which was his way of saying that despite the obstacles[,] Miles had seen it through and produced something extraordinary and lasting.”93 Although the legend dis­appears u­ nder even the slightest scrutiny, the ­music holds up. The tension was real. As Monk lamented, perhaps self-­ servingly, “The conditions w ­ ere terrible. We w ­ ere tired. The producer was not in the best of moods. It was Christmas Eve, and every­one wanted to go home.”94 But the products ­were the classic recordings released on disc as Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz ­Giants and Bag’s Groove. “Miles credited it with pushing him further in the direction of utilizing space to ‘breathe through ­ usic,’ ” as one critic noted. “He called the rec­ord a classic, and said it’s the m where ‘I started to understand how to create space by leaving the piano out and just letting every­body stroll. I would extend and use that concept more ­later.’ ”95 In 1959, fi­nally able to give up his optometry practice and devote himself to recording full-­time, Van Gelder and his wife Elva de­cided to build their own ­house, and they designed a separate space on their Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, property. Van Gelder remembered, “Back in the mid-1940s, Wright and his students had developed a concept of making beautiful homes from ­humble, natu­ral materials that ordinary ­people could afford. ­These ­were



Jazz at the Cliffside 77

called Usonian ­houses. We loved the concept, since a recording studio has to be an organic space. Cost and esthetics ­were impor­tant, too, of course.”96 Inspired by Usonian architecture, Rudy and Elva hired the architect David Henken (a student of Frank Lloyd Wright) and the developer Armand Giglio to build a studio on their newly purchased lot, detached from their home, in Englewood Cliffs.97 The design of the raf­ters and arches—­“ bolted together at the top and joined at the bottom with a steel cable ­under the floor”—­ created the open space for a studio “unencumbered by columns.”98 Van Gelder worked with Henken and Giglio to build a studio that fit his bud­get while creating the ideal recording environment. The masonry base was built out of custom-­cast cinder blocks with the pigment embedded in the mix. The Douglas fir arches and raf­ters ­were uncoated, with cedar tongue-­ and-­groove decking. E ­ very detail was designed with the effect on recording in mind. And, typically for Van Gelder, he never revealed ­those details: “The way sound reflects off the masonry and wood is the secret. The five walls allow the sound to move up into the raf­ters and back down without being trapped or muffled.”99 Rudy Van Gelder paid attention to ­every detail: “Let me tell you, t­ here’s no paint on that ceiling. ­There’s no varnish. That’s the ­actual raw wood ­there the way it was all ­those years ago. They wanted to do something. They wanted to seal it. They wanted to cover it. I said, ‘No, ­don’t touch it. Just leave it the way it is.’ ”100 The result was a “cathedral-­like space” with a “vaulted ceiling made of laminated Douglas-­fir arches and cedar planks, giving the room a Scandinavian feel.”101 As Marc Myers describes his visit to the studio, “Snap your fin­gers or talk, and the sound appears to hang in the air momentarily, as if the raf­ters w ­ ere evaluating the sonic quality before letting it go.”102 The jazz historian Ashley Kahn captures the dramatic effect the new space would have on the musicians who ­were used to the comfortable living room in Hackensack: “Upon entering the studio directly from the driveway, visitors ­were greeted to a surprise: a stunningly reverberant, atriumlike space, defined by two huge wooden arches intersecting far overhead. The pyramidal, ribbed ceiling—­ wooden slats neatly connecting the arches—­leant the appearance of an inverted hull. . . . ​The studio radiated the feel of a small, modern-­style church.”103 Some musicians resisted at first, but Van Gelder cautioned them to be patient, and once the first recordings w ­ ere made—­and heard—no complaints ­were heard again. The spaces ­were so completely dif­fer­ent, yet nothing was lost in the transition as both rooms “had a live edge to them.”104

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Stanley Turrentine’s “Blue Hour” session with The Three Sounds, Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, December 12, 1960. (Photo by Francis Wolff, courtesy of Mosaic Rec­ords.)

Van Gelder himself had a singular personality, described variously as a “reclusive self-­taught craftsman,”105 (possibly unfairly) “an odd-­duck audio goof,”106 “fastidious” “meticulous”—­some of t­ hese coming from afar, capturing his mystique maybe more than his personality, and not necessarily from ­those who knew him. “Rudy was basically gentle,” Prestige’s Ira Gitler remarked. “The only times I remember him becoming agitated ­were when ­people became careless with food or drink, particularly if anything was placed on the piano.” As both recording technology and modern jazz developed in the postwar era, Van Gelder pioneered their union—­adapting new tools and techniques



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to capture the stylistic and creative explosion of the m ­ usic in ways that other studios could not.107 In contributing to the creation of the Blue Note Sound for the label, Van Gelder’s recordings stood out for “their warmth, clarity, and sonic precision.”108 “Whereas ­earlier jazz recordings seemed to come at the listener from a distance,” writes one jazz scholar, “Van Gelder found ways to approach and capture the ­music at closer range, and to more clearly convey jazz’s characteristic sense of immediacy.”109 Van Gelder was notoriously secretive about his techniques, but he emphasized the h­ uman dimension of his work: “All I can tell you is that when I achieved what I thought the musicians ­were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, every­thing is beautiful. I was always searching for that point.”110 Van Gelder preferred not to reveal his secrets ­because, to him, the recording pro­cess was not about tools and techniques, but the p­ eople and their vision. “Usually my needs and wants are not related to the audiophile arena,” Van Gelder claimed. “My needs are dictated by what the musicians want to do. They are interested in their own sound. I select components that facilitate that. That’s what’s happening.”111 On recording perhaps his most famous contribution to jazz, Van Gelder remembered, “The most momentous recording of the 1960s for me was John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. It was hypnotic. It was exciting. It was dif­fer­ent. But I ­didn’t have t­ hose views when it was recorded.” Typical for Van Gelder, at the time he was more involved in the pro­cess than the ­music itself. “You have to understand, I was busy making sure that the work was recorded perfectly. It ­wasn’t ­until I was working on updating the original master [in 2002] that I listened intently to the ­music.”112 Another time he said, “The session was hypnotic, exciting and dif­fer­ent. But I d­ idn’t realize that ­until I remastered the tapes many years ­later. When Coltrane was ­here, I was too worried about capturing the ­music.”113 Praise of Van Gelder’s work is not quite universal. Charles Mingus famously objected to the way “he tries to change p­ eople’s tones. I’ve seen him do it; I’ve seen him do it. . . . ​That’s why I never go to him; he ruined my bass sound.”114 ­After Van Gelder’s death in 2016, occasional critics emerged. Looking back on his c­ areer and what he had created in his two studios, Van Gelder reflected: I’ve always worked for individual musicians and producers, along with labels. I still do. But I always try to work for the ­little guy and make it pos­si­ble for him

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to compete with the big guys—­technically and musically. That’s the way I also handled my business. I could have expanded, hiring lots of ­people. But I de­cided to stay small. . . . ​Sometimes I sit ­here and think of all the ­great artists who came through and all the m ­ usic that was made h­ ere. The musicians are still alive in my mind, just like the last time I saw them h­ ere.”115

Despite his technical bent—­the fact that he looked like the engineer he was—he took an artist’s view of his own role in the pro­cess. In a 2008 interview with the National Endowment for the Arts, Van Gelder said: Jazz essentially is improvised, so to sit t­ here and listen to a musician improvising with a band and every­one playing together, hopefully that creates an atmosphere that can never be reproduced b­ ecause y­ ou’re t­ here at the presence of the creation of the ­music. . . . ​So what I do is I endeavor to reproduce that moment and make sure that what ­they’re trying to say is presented in the best pos­si­ble way. The essential t­ hing that’s missing is the improvisation part. I d­ on’t consider that I have a sound. I’m not the performer. . . . ​It’s my job to make sure that I understand what he’s trying to do and pre­sent it in an environment that he’s comfortable in and then deliver that for the producer who’s hiring me.116

4 • TR ANSYLVANIA BANDSTAND AND ROCKIN’ WITH THE COOL GHOUL

In the mid-1960s, at the height of American youth’s post Beatlemania obsession with rock ’n’ roll, New Jersey teen­agers gathered daily around their tele­vi­sion sets to rock along with Disc-­O-­Teen, a live-­in-­studio pop m ­ usic show hosted by Zacherley, the pioneering horror TV host. It is easy to underestimate the revolutionary influence of the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. It all seems so quaint and even cute in retrospect and in comparison to what we now know was to come in the following years. But, as much as any single event, the Beatles appearances on the Ed S­ ullivan Show for three consecutive weeks, coming so soon a­ fter the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, unleashed a social revolution. Sure, the foundations ­were ­there. JFK had already asked young p­ eople what they could do for their country, the Students for a Demo­cratic Society had already called on youth to reclaim the American dream, Freedom Riders had already desegregated buses and lunch ­counters, and Bob Dylan had just announced to young Amer­ic­ a that “The Times They Are a-­Changin’.” But the Beatles unleashed the ids of millions of kids, giving them the freedom to create their own identities and a new sense of what was pos­si­ble, both individually and communally. Premiering in Newark, New Jersey, in May 1965, Disc-­O-­Teen followed the formula that American Bandstand had perfected over the past de­cade of rock bands promoting their current hits surrounded by enthusiastically dancing 81

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teens, but with a twist. The central character on Disc-­O-­Teen was Zacherley, the man Dick Clark dubbed the Cool Ghoul.1 Appearing onstage in an undertaker’s costume, his face blacked up, intoning the band introductions and between-­song patter in his trademark spectral voice, Zacherley, even more than the dancers or the bands, gave the show its character. John Zacherle began his ­career in show business in 1957 with the character of Roland, a vampiric tele­vi­sion host in Philadelphia. Roland introduced the Million Dollar Movie Shock Theater showings of the old horror films from the 1930s and 1940s, cutting in during commercial breaks to perform “experiments” in his laboratory with his wife (always unseen from inside her coffin) and his lab assistant Gasport. ­After developing a following in Philly, Zacherle was lured to New York to host Chiller Theatre in 1961 where he became Zacherley. Universal Studios had released its vault of old horror films to tele­ vi­sion, and ­there was a ­whole new generation of kids ready to be scared sleepless by Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, and “TV’s Loveable Ghoul.”2 The character of Zacherley was a true original, both scary and funny, “a cadaverous undertaker with hollowed cheeks, white pasty skin, hair parted in the m ­ iddle like Alfalfa and a delicious and droll delivery that signaled to ­every kid watching that this indeed was where the under­ground army would truly begin.”3 Kids and teens strug­gled to stay awake, or sneaked back to the living room to watch ­after their parents had gone to bed, to catch Zach’s antics, as he broke into the movies to engage in dialogue with the characters or conduct an experiment on a brain (made out of cauliflower and Jell-­O). The guitarist Steven Van Zandt, who became a fan growing up in Middletown Township, remembers, “Zacherley would come into the ­middle of the monster movie and suddenly appear ­doing something hilarious, and it was g­ reat— he had a g­ reat show. He’d have that laboratory g­ oing on, and he’d do some ­ iddle of the movie he’d show up dancing with a bits ­there and in the m gorilla—it was hilarious.”4 Zacherley developed a rabid cult following of young viewers who would watch alone at night, then eagerly meet up with their friends at school the next day to compare notes on Zach and see who had managed to stay up the latest. Although Zacherley’s shtick seems so corny now (and it was even then), he also understood how to use the medium to build suspense and scare the viewer, especially young viewers, up late, watching the old horror films alone. The show was canceled in 1963, but Zach had made an indelible impression on youngsters in the New York area. One fan remembers,



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“­ Zacherley was forbidden. He was ­every parent’s nightmare, appearing on late night TV—on school nights!—­and enlisting a growing army of young lab assistants in the eternal strug­gle to stay up as late as pos­si­ble.”5 A ­couple of years l­ater, a group of tele­vi­sion producers was planning to launch a new channel way out on the fringes of the broadcast medium on UHF, the ultra-­high frequency channels above Channel 13 on the tele­vi­sion dial. They ­were looking to create counterprogramming to lure viewers away from the handful of national networks and local stations, and they wanted to do it cheaply. UHF was out of the way for most viewers, but kids would go ­there if the programming existed. For one of the financiers, the motive was to sell UHF set-­top converters, as older sets w ­ ere not equipped to find the signal.6 The writer Barry Landers approached the program director Fred Sayles for a job at the new station and together they came up with the idea for a teen dance show; Sayles suggested Zacherley. WNJU TV-47 launched on May 16, 1965, with Sayles and Zacherley replacing the test pattern at 9:00 p.m. to introduce the station’s new shows, which included a kids’ show and professional wrestling. Part of the wave of local dance shows a­ fter the success of American Bandstand, Disc-­O-­Teen broadcast live ­every weekday at 6:00 p.m. (with a taped show on Saturdays) from the 10,000-­square-­foot Studio A—­“the largest TV studio of any in­de­pen­dent TV station in the entire USA”—on the second floor of the Mosque Theatre (also known as Symphony Hall) in Newark, an impressive, if well-­worn, neoclassical edifice, originally opened as a Masonic ­temple in 1925, with imposing ionic columns and a glass dome over the sidewalk.7 On Disc-­O-­Teen kids danced to the latest popu­lar recorded ­music or live local bands. Barry Landers, who became the show’s producer, remembered, “We would ask the kids what the hit rec­ords ­were, and we went out and bought them. . . . ​We had no concept at all as to what was a hit. . . . ​They choreographed a lot of the dances.”8 Too poor to pay the fees for professional bands to play live, or even lip-­synch, the show instead mixed visits from touring bands who chatted with Zach and judged dance contests. Local bands played covers of the latest hits live in the show’s B ­ attle of the Bands. As one regular described the scene, kids would “frug/jerk/monkey/swim/twist to canned ­music u­ ntil the band would make its appearance, perform two songs live, a­ fter which ­they’d pony/stroll/stomp/watusi to a few more songs. Zach would talk to the band and some lucky audience members, do a live commercial or two, say ‘Goodnight, what­ever you are!’ and fade to black.”9

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Disc-­O-­Teen created the environment for the formation of a scene, with dancing on the show as a social act and participation in a musical community.10 Through this scene teen­agers developed a sense of themselves as active participants in the creation of their own lives and community.11 The community was not only local, based at the show, but generational and translocal, as young ­people connected to ­others through the burgeoning national (and global) taste-­based youth culture of the era.12 Youth culture has been a useful category of historical analy­sis, and, although not all the scenes in this book are made up of young ­people, some are fruitfully examined through the history of youth culture, especially the communities and geographies of youth, the spaces that young p­ eople inhabit individually and in groups. Youth culture scenes are always hybrid, neither fully autonomous nor fully determined by outside sources such as parents or mass culture.13 The teen dance show was one such space, where young ­people carved out terrain to identify insiders and outsiders—­with locally specific rules—­and to situate themselves within the larger world of youth culture and society at large. The environs of the show provided a place for ­ritual, custom, history, creativity, consumption, plea­sure, stimulation, danger, escape, and “the release of deep seated emotions and desires in close ­proximity to ­others.”14 Sometimes the involvement of scenesters can be viewed as a type of tribalism, almost communal, though not without stratification.15 Scenes are often (though not always) demo­cratic, where engagement becomes a kind of “participatory per­for­mance” where every­one is si­mul­ta­neously the performer and the audience.16 The scene at Disc-­O-­Teen is a prime example of the “grassroots networks and activities” that constitute m ­ usic worlds.17 It is a useful place to track the “micro-­mobilization” and networks in showing how local scenes are connected to ­others and to larger worlds of meaning, in making “­music as collective action.”18 From the beginning of the show, a regular group of dancers appeared, many coming ­every day from the surrounding neighborhoods and suburbs. Many kids came from the Newark high schools—­Arts, East Side, and especially Barringer—­walking up Broad Street or taking the bus ­after school. But ­others came by bus, train, or parents’ car from all over the region, from Maplewood to Teaneck, Kenilworth, and Springfield, Irvington, Keyport, Hillside, Elizabeth, and South Plainfield. Some even came from New York, with a contingent regularly traveling in from Staten Island: “It was a long trip



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from S.I. and we had to convince someone’s f­ ather to drive us t­ here or make the trek to Manhattan (by Ferry!), where we could get the Path train to Newark and then walk to The Mosque Theater. The w ­ hole trip could take up to 2 hours one way and we would have to bolt out of school so we could get ­there on time.”19 One boy frequently made the two-­hour journey by subway and bus from the Bronx to appear on “DOT,” as they called it. Good dancers ­were invited back and given monthly passes. Unlike on American Bandstand, the dancers did not have to come as ­couples, so girls predominated. Though the minimum age was supposed to be sixteen, kids as young as twelve made themselves up to look older to get in. The regulars developed a familiarity and camaraderie from their experience on the show. Zacherley was the star, but the kids made the show, even adding their own artwork to the set, especially one regular’s large horror movie character posters.20 The show helped some of the kids to forge a new identity. “I ­didn’t ­really fit in at high school,” one regular remembered, “but when I walked into that studio, all of a sudden it clicked. ­There ­were a hundred or so p­ eople in ­there just like me, and they became my peer group.”21 Another girl knew she had found her place in the world when she discovered the show: I was playing around with my parent’s tv set and somehow switched to the UHF band. What a delightful sight met my eyes when I saw kids dancing on a show that was being taped not far from where I lived. I immediately sent away for tickets and ran out to buy something groovey to wear. With my best friend Chrissie in tow, we found ourselves at The Mosque Theater in Newark dancing ­under the hottest lights ever! As we waited to tape a second show lined up in the hallway, Barry Landers approached us and asked if we’d like to be regulars on the show. Coming from high schools where we ­were dubbed Beatle Beatle Rolling Stone, had stones thrown at us and ­were truly the outcasts, this sounded like a g­ reat idea to us.22

Cliques, crushes, romances, best-­friends-­for-­life—­the typical fare of teens—­developed on the set. Some kids came in groups, secure in their in-­ ­ thers came alone and never felt quite accepted.23 Some indicrowd status. O viduals earned nicknames. So Carol became Donut Girl ­because she brought donuts in from her job at a bakery.24 Marsha became Flower Girl.25 Linda P.—­ “the beauty who stole many a male viewer’s heart”—­was universally adored by the boys on set and watching at home.26 The camera men favored the prettier

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girls and better dancers, including Heather, who would sneak away from rehearsals at the Newark Ballet com­pany and, at “barely 80 pounds and u­ nder five foot . . . ​got a lot of camera time.”27 Several of the girls designed and made their own clothes, often in the hours just before the show, influenced by the London scene through listening to rec­ords and reading Rave Magazine.28 Chris D. developed a distinctive and recognizable style, featuring bull’s-­eye tops, silver mini­skirts or pants, mod boots, thick black hair and “unique, geometric op-­art clothing—­a graphic look that ­really stood out on B+W TV.”29 The clothes ­were an essential part of creating community and identity through the show. One male regular remembers: Wearing the most impractical outfits on DOT ­because they ­were cool looking. I can remember walking around in the ­middle of the dog days of August dressed in a full length dress military coat (wool) with long sleeves and also military jackets from West Point in the dead of Summer. I remember neighbor’s [sic] of ours trying to be “helpful” to my parents by alerting my mom that it was typical “junkie” be­hav­ior to wear long sleeves even in the Summertime. I remember on days that my Dad would drive us to DOT that the neighbors would ­actually come out of their ­houses and stand on their lawns to watch Claudia, Jill, Russ and Janet Powell, and Rick arrive at my ­house in their mini dresses and Mod regalia. It’s ­really funny to think back at how outrageous that all was regarded back then, but I also remember at the time that it felt r­eally rebellious and almost a ­little dangerous.30

Regulars hung out at Nick’s, the greasy-­spoon diner on Broad Street across from the Mosque Theater. In the summer they met for ice cream and gossip; in the winter Nick’s provided the warmth not available for ­those waiting ­under the marquee for Joe the Cop to let them in. The waitress adored the kids, despite their low tips and typical teenage pranks with salt and sugar shakers.31 When a group of Disc-­O-­Teen regulars pulled pranks on the set, one time covering the ladies room with toilet paper and drawing on the mirrors with lipstick and soap, they incurred the wrath of the show’s producer, Barry Landers, who threatened them with banishment from the show.32 The regulars developed their own slang and in-­group symbols. In the summer of 1966, dancers on the show began to flash the V sign, which they called Crunch, to each other and the camera, as a signal of “solidarity for ­those



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who danced on the show.”33 While the V sign had meant “Victory” during World War II, and was coming to be used as a symbol of peace to young ­people across the country, on Disc-­O-­Teen Crunch had a decidedly sexual connotation, a “secret symbol for sex, sexiness—or an exceptionally large part of the male anatomy.”34 As one regular remembered, “It became like a communication code between Discoteen regulars with almost a rebellious implication, as we enjoyed the fact that most adults and outsiders had a totally dif­fer­ent interpretation of it’s [sic] meaning. A ­ fter it became a common symbol for the peace movement in 1967, most p­ eople assumed we w ­ ere all just promoting peace, which made it more fun for us to do.”35 Although t­ here ­were plenty of male regulars, clearly the girls dominated the scene, drawing the attention of the cameramen and the audience. It is striking how dominant the girls w ­ ere in the scene. As with other fan communities, the Disc-­O-­ Teen environment provided a space for teenage girls to navigate adolescence and the wider world of mass culture, straddling the line of consumer and producer within the subcultural community.36 The bands, on the other hand, ­were almost 100 ­percent male. Disc-­O-­Teen featured, in addition to the regular dancers, local garage bands stocked from the local high schools and ju­nior high schools. Among the local bands to appear on the show w ­ ere: the Newbreed, the Splynters (with the lead singer pushed around the set in a coffin),37 the Gingermen, Chips & Co., the Fugitives, Carnival of Souls, Four Roses, Gyrations, Secret Seven, Danny and Diego, the Critters, the Fugitives, Broken Bones, Gilgos 5, E ­ very ­Mother’s Son, the Strays, the Mark V, Confederate Society, Holy Droners, Herald Square, and the Doughboys.38 ­Others included the Explorers, the Henchmen, the Deep End, the Primates, the Luvs, Vito and the Overtones, the Eight Feet (four girls), Johnny and the High Keys, the Artie Ehman Trio (featuring a blind drummer), the Corvairs, Donny Vann, Gayle Hanness, Scott Fagan, the Ascots who became the Doughboys. Most played covers of hits by the Rolling Stones and other British bands, though some played original compositions. Richard X. Heymann recalls the appearance of the Ascots: You see, the day of the show, “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones hit the shelves of Gregory’s ­Music Store in Plainfield and our guitarist Willy was t­ here to snatch it, rush it over to my ­house on Kenyon Ave­nue, like a severed limb to be reattached, with the team of musical microsurgeons, the Ascots, assembled to

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perform the delicate operation and join it to our repertoire. This may not sound like much to you, but believe me, it was an impressive and bold move. The song ­wasn’t even on the radio yet, nobody had heard it, and we ­were g­ oing to perform it live on TV. A coup. We could have even claimed it was a song we “made”. ­After deciphering the code of Mick Jagger’s mumbling, we tackled the weird eastern neo-­Hindu m ­ usic, ran through it a few times, hopped in our VW van, and dashed up to Newark for the broadcast.39

Disc-­O-­Teen was a central stop on the thriving New Jersey garage band scene, with (mostly) teenage bands playing schools and clubs throughout the state, including Dodds in Orange, M ­ others in Greenwood Lake, D’Jais in Belmar, and the Hullabaloo nightclub in Manville.40 One rocker remembered, “­There ­were a lot of dif­fer­ent types of gigs in ­those days for underaged bands. We played CYO dances, t­ emple dances, jr. high and high schools and YMCAs. ­There ­were even teen clubs like Club 65 in Elizabeth, New Jersey where all the kids went. The Moose and Elks held teen dances as well.”41 ­Every year Disc-­O-­Teen held a series of ­Battles of the Bands, culminating in an annual winner to be awarded a contract with Buddah Rec­ords, won in 1965 by Herald Square and 1966 by the Ascots, who ­later changed their name to the Doughboys and scored a hit single with “Rhoda Mendelbaum.”42 A few, like the Critters, recording on the Kama Sutra label (with the Lovin’ Spoonful), reached a level of success, with “Younger Girl” and even charting in the Top 40 with “Mister Dieingly Sad” and “­Don’t Let the Rain Fall Down On Me.” Up-­and-­coming touring bands, or even nationally known acts such as the Blues Magoos, the Blues Proj­ect (with f­ uture members of Blood, Sweat and Tears), the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Rascals, and the Easybeats visited the show, some even playing or lip-­synching, but most judging dance contests and clowning around during the themed episodes. Saturday shows—­the only ones not broadcast live—­were devoted to themes (including Beach, Hillbilly, Vampire’s Ball, Roman, Spy, Dinosaur Egg Roll) so that the regulars would bring a change of costume for the taping on Friday night ­after the live show.43 Touring bands often played Symphony Hall downstairs from Studio A, and Disc-­O-­Teen regulars attended the shows, sometimes even dancing on stage. The Beach Boys visited twice, and regulars spotted them eating at Nick’s. When the Rolling Stones played on November 7, 1965, the four finalists from the Disc-­O-­Teen ­Battle of the Bands opened up, with DOT regulars, dressed in “flapper-­fringed ‘go-go’ outfits,” dancing between acts.44



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The most famous episode featured a visit from the Doors in June 1967. Fresh off the release of their single “Light My Fire,” while the song was still rising on the Billboard charts, the Doors signed a rare “trade for mention,” which meant they would lip-­synch along with the prerecorded song—­ something that cost the show a ­great deal more than a mere appearance.45 Although the band’s notoriety was in the ­future, the kids who followed ­music knew about the band. Among the regulars, the show has achieved mythic status, clouded in mixed and conflicting memories, with vari­ous bands claiming to have appeared as well. The cameraman Joe LoRe’ even remembers that the band arrived fresh from the recording studio with a brand new “acetate master” of their unreleased song—­but “Light My Fire” had been recorded the previous summer, the a­ lbum released in January, and the single in May as the second single from the ­album.46 One ­thing every­one agrees on, however: “Jim Morrison was a perfect ass, making himself obnoxious on and off camera.”47 Before the show, some of the regulars hung out in Zach’s office with members of the band—­the keyboardist Ray Manzarek playing with Zach’s apple corer and Jim discussing a less-­well-­known California group called the Godz with one of the regulars.48 While lip-­synching, Morrison fondled the microphone suggestively while leering at the camera.49 When Zach interviewed him, Morrison refused to speak, staring blankly ahead and mugging for the camera. Morrison seemed stoned, something that the young dancers of DOT w ­ ere not (yet) acquainted with. Just before the end of the show, ­after wandering through the dancers on this Beach Bum–­ themed episode, Jim turned to Zach and muttered, “This is the freakiest show I’ve ever seen.”50 The show faced its greatest challenge during the deadly riots in Newark in July 1967. During the a­ ctual week of the riots in July, the shows went on the air with very few dancers. One regular remembers, “I was on that show with only a handful of p­ eople. I took the city bus down as usual to Broad Street and I guess many of the other kids parents ­were smarter about not driving them or not allowing them into the city. The bus ­stopped ­running by the time DOT was over and I had no way home so Zak drove me to a friend’s ­house, close to downtown.”51 Richard Scrivani recalls, “Of course nobody was ­there, three kids came and their ­father brought them. . . . ​The Sweet Inspirations also showed up, they lived in Newark. So we had to do the ­whole show with them singing, and I ­don’t know ­whether they sang a lot or what happened, it was all lip-­synching.”52 Another regular’s memory is more typical,

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“My ­sister and I ­really wanted to go but our parents made us wait a ­couple of weeks before they felt it was safe enough for us to return.”53 ­After the riots, only gradually did parents begin to allow their kids to return to the set: “I ­wouldn’t be attending any shows for some time that summer. In fact I remember watching and seeing hardly any ­people dancing during that time.”54 The riots highlighted the changing nature of Newark, especially racially. As early as 1966, it was clear that the show would not be immune to outside issues. Richard Scrivani writes, As the summer [of 1966] rolled on, more young p­ eople from the Newark area got wind of the fact that ­there was a dancing show being broadcast in their backyard, and since the city had a sizable minority population, the show began reflecting a distinct ethnic diversity. Soon black and Hispanic kids began to outnumber the Caucasian population in the studio (Newark was also comprised of a generous helping of Polish and Italian families), temperaments clashed and tension began to grow. I remember a distinct effort being made to keep the show “balanced,” by including a proportionate number of dif­fer­ent races, but trou­ble was looming in spite of it. Fights would sometimes break out outside the Mosque Theater, and t­ here ­were more than a few times when Keith and I would make tracks across the street to the car to avoid impending trou­ble.55

The scene was fracturing, as the shared identity of the teens was challenged by new arrivals and changing times. The producers of the show did their part to accommodate the new developments, as one regular remembered: “I remember once, asking Barry if I can dance with a black girl (she was always so much fun-­but I c­ an’t remember her name)? Not only did he say yes, but he put us up on the ‘platform’ (in the corner, with the 2 posts with the ‘cobwebs’ connecting them)!!!!! Pretty daring stuff, for 1967!!!!”56 The show had kept the real world at bay, but only by ignoring it and providing a safe space for kids to create their own world. But it could only last for so long. The summer of 1967 was the final one for Disc-­O-­Teen. The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and rock ’n’ roll was transformed instantly from something to dance to into something to think about. And smoke pot to.57 Many of the regulars began to fade away as a new wave of younger teens arrived. Some of ­those regulars graduated to the New York scene, frequenting the Fillmore East and other rock clubs (where they ­were



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sometimes recognized by DOT fans58). Scrivani remembers that by last few months of show, The usual familiar ­faces of the “regulars” ­were for the most part gone also; every­ one was getting older, priorities w ­ ere being shuffled and younger kids started to filter in. In many cases, the kids ­were so young that Disc-­o-­teen was in danger of resembling a c­ hildren’s show. Even the dancing was changed—­the classic sixties dances the original kids had been ­doing (the “Frug,” the “Swim,” the “Pony,” the “Jerk,” ­etc) was [sic] now replaced by a single gyration which consisted of nothing more than standing in place, knees bending slightly, while moving the arms up and down in time with the m ­ usic. It w ­ asn’t so much dancing as swaying to the beat, and it took so ­little effort that it just looked silly. Even Zach seemed less interested in the show, his between-­the-­songs business having lost some of its pizzazz, his talks with the new kids more perfunctory than inspired. The end was near, you could feel it in the air.59

The end came suddenly and with ­little fanfare. The final show, billed as “the two and a half year anniversary” show, was taped on October 31, and broadcast November 4, 1967.60 Rumors had circulated in the weeks before, so some of the regulars returned. Sue drew a picture of a haunted mansion called “Zaks Place,” which she presented to Zacherley.61 The band ­Every ­Mother’s Son and a strange character named Brute Force appeared, and Linda P. sang a lip-­synch duet of “I Got You, Babe” with Zach.62 Scrivani remembers: The show ended with Zach climbing onto the bandstand, ­gently shooing off the array of newcomers dancing t­ here, replacing them with the small group of original regulars, all dancing to the Dave Clark Five’s version of “You Got What It Takes.” Joe’s camera dollied back, far into the nether regions of the vast studio, the tiny figures swaying to the m ­ usic seeming to wave “goodbye” for the last time, John Zacherle ­doing his famous “underarm” dance on center stage. Fadeout. No one watching the show outside of the inner circle had a clue that it would not be on the next day or any other day. Disc-­o-­teen was gone with a whimper.63

Mark, who was a regular on the last season, recalls being quite aware of the ending: “If my memory serves me right, at the end of the very last show,

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the camera pulled all the way to the back of the studio showing a distant shot of the ­whole set. Me, being VERY MUCH AWARE that the show (and DOT itself) was ending, I de­cided to wave good-­bye (I believe I’m ­towards the left side of the screen -­­there w ­ ere [sic] no one in front of me and my partner). The reason I know all this, is b­ ecause I watched the last show that Saturday and cried that this was the end.”64 The producer Barry Landers remembers the sadness at the end: When Eddie Cooperstein and Herb Greene de­cided that they w ­ ere g­ oing to kill the show, I mean, that was like death. It was like somebody died. It was like a stake literally through our hearts, honest to goodness. Zach wanted to make sure it was low-­key. A very quiet day, very somber day. The girls ­were crying, we all ­were. It was like a big dark cloud descended upon the entire place, and we ­didn’t want to talk about it. We ­didn’t discuss it in the control room, we ­didn’t discuss it in the office. Zach was trying to be as stiff-­upper-­lipped as he possibly could, but I know he was heartbroken. . . . ​Every­body was.65

­ fter the taping, the regulars gathered around Zach’s car, decorating it with A art and messages.66 Zach collected the self-­addressed envelopes from the regulars, in which he l­ater sent them individual, handwritten notes thanking them “for making DOT such a fun show to watch.”67 Landers describes the dynamics of DOT, “The kids made the show. And Zach just had this ­great love for them, you know, and they loved him, they just adored him. And the crew did too.”68 Zacherley was unfailingly “charming and polite.”69 The personal touch from Zach was something felt by all who encountered him. Kids came to the show starstruck, in awe to meet the ­great tele­vi­sion star Zacherley, a “magnetic” and mesmerizing performer to a young teenager.70 And they all came away with a real personal connection to a charismatic yet h­ umble gentleman, one who kept in touch with many of the regulars u­ ntil his death, fifty years ­later, in 2016 at the age of ninety-­eight.

5 • THE UPSTAGE CLUB AND THE ASBURY PARK SCENE

No man towers over New Jersey m ­ usic history more than Bruce Springsteen. And the rock world he emerged from in Asbury Park has its place firmly established in rock history. The world he inhabited at the Stone Pony is the stuff of legend. But less is known about the scene that preceded the “Glory Days.” If Disc-­O-­Teen and the garage band explosion emerged on the heels of Beatlemania in the mid-1960s, by the end of the de­cade, ­after the Summer of Love and Woodstock, rock was an established institution in American culture—­and the methods of plugging into that global network occurred on the local level. In Asbury Park the local kids and musicians bridged the world of the 1960s and 1970s at the Upstage Club. Asbury Park had long had a reputation for summer fun with a honky-­tonk flavor. The boardwalk, amusement parks, and beach beckoned day-­trippers to the Jersey Shore. By the 1960s, the town had a well-­worn edge, with a bit of an anything-­goes feel to it—­a place to slough off the week’s toil and let loose. What we know as “The Sixties” was made on the ground level, in daily life, not just in the mass media. For young ­people letting loose in the 1960s, Asbury was the place to go to play out of the prying eyes of parents. Young p­ eople cruised the Cir­cuit, a mile-­long loop that bordered the coastline and circled back, the ave­nues dotted with clubs, bars, and hangouts, racing in the streets, chasing members of the opposite sex, tossing fireworks, hitchhiking, greasers taunting the longhairs, and ­doing their best to avoid the law for the crimes 93

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of sleeping on the beach or loitering or ­going barefoot on the boardwalk.1 Asbury was just a bit weirder than the average Jersey Shore town. In the 1960s, t­ here ­were all sorts of places to fool around in Asbury, and lots of bars and clubs, so ­there was a critical mass of local and nearby musicians playing the Cir­cuit, as well as youngsters inspired by the folk scene in Greenwich Village, Beatlemania, and the hardening sounds of rock in the Summer of Love in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Asbury had a multitude of places to play. Visiting major acts could play the Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre. “The local ­music scene,” Steven Van Zandt claims, “was unlike any local scene before our time or a­ fter. For the only time in history ­there ­were dozens of places for teen­agers to hang out and see live rock bands. High school dances, VFW halls, u­ nion halls, all the beach clubs in Sea Bright, coffee h­ ouses, colleges, festivals in parks, and even a night club called the ‘Teendezvous.’ ­There w ­ ere also a lot of ­music shows on T.V.”2 Other clubs like the Hullabaloo (­later the Sunshine In) and the Student Prince, only wanted Top-40 cover bands. So, musicians would work t­ hose paying gigs, where they played what the ­owners wanted and fans danced to, but they had no place to explore and create their own ­music. It was only at the Upstage Club that a new sort of scene could develop. The Upstage Club arose from the unlikely pairing of a married ­couple of hairdressers. Tom Potter was a singular character—­a “wacky, big, burly, bearded, larger-­than-­life, profane man.”3 Injured while training as a paratrooper during World War II and honorably discharged at the rank of corporal, Tom attended the beauty school at Wilfred Acad­emy in Newark and went to work in the f­amily beauty salon a­ fter the war. But at vari­ous times he also owned a “Fix-­It-­Shop” and a cruise-­chartering business, took classes in photography and art, produced works of fiction, paintings, sculptures, photomontages, and judged beauty contests—­all while finding the time for a ­couple of marriages. In 1961, Tom met nineteen-­year-­old Margaret, twenty years his ju­nior, who became the third Mrs. Potter. Tom’s unpredictable, artistic spirit was a perfect match for Margaret’s adventurous, competitive nature.4 Together they owned a beauty shop on the second floor of a Cookman Ave­nue walkup up in Asbury Park, with their apartment on the third floor and a roof garden. A “surreal place, complete with Tom’s abstract drawings and sculptures . . . ​the Potter h­ ouse became a gathering place for musicians, artists, photog­raphers, and poets,” according to Tom’s grand­daughter



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and biographer Carrie Potter-­Devening. “On weekends you could expect the unexpected.”5 The environment was “like Beatniks meet Hippies.”6 ­There, Margaret learned guitar and formed her band Margaret and the Distractions. Tom became allergic to the dyes and chemicals involved in hairdressing and photography, and looked around for other ways to foster his artistic drive and make a living. And the parties kept getting bigger, outgrowing the confines of their apartment. Margaret Potter remembered the all-­night sessions when she would invite musicians over ­after their gigs: So that’s how it started, that way. I’d have a ­couple ­people over and one eve­ ning I conned them into trading guitar lessons for breakfast. Alright? So, as I gradually learned to play the guitar, and t­ hese ­people came over, it began to grow. The next ­thing you knew, as I learned to play and as other ­people heard about it, you know I’d just throw an extra pot of coffee on, the next ­thing you knew, like maybe two or three bands in the local area w ­ ere coming over for breakfast, and ­were bringing their instruments, alright . . . ​sitting ­there and waiting till ­there was a ­free instrument. I mean, they would play all night, then sit and play till daylight. So, my husband, who was a hairdresser, became allergic to hair dye, so he ­couldn’t do hair anymore, and he says, you know, ­there has to be a way—­these musicians, you know, they d­ on’t ever want to stop playing—­ there has to be a way to make a living out of it and for them to have a place . . . ​ to go and do this.7

Tom began to think of a coffee­house or club, “partly to get all of ­those ­people out of his ­house, but also as a means of filling a need in the community. He became keen to provide a place where the musicians could sit and play for hours and do what­ever they wanted.”8 With a partner, Tom conceived the Upstage Club as an indoor extension of the Cir­cuit, and Margaret quickly became “the driving force b­ ehind the club that began from a spark of Tom’s imagination.”9 Tom came from an older generation, but he recognized the wild youth in his midst, especially as the hippie counterculture emerged in full bloom by 1967. Hippie youth lived in local boarding­houses, crashed on each other’s floors, or rented cheap walkups. Younger kids flocked to Asbury for the freedom of its boardwalk. And the lingua franca of youth was rock ­music.

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Tom rented a space two doors down from his apartment “to create a place where musicians could come and play and hang with each other.”10 Potter had a specific vision that would nurture the musical environment, allowing musicians not only to perform, but to play with each other, to jam and hang out, exchanging ideas and sounds. Joe Petillo, sixteen years old and hanging out at the all-­night apartment sessions while playing in Margaret’s band, remembers Tom seeking his counsel—­after he had already rented the space: “Whenever Tom had an idea, it was hard not to get caught up in his ­enthusiasm. I can still remember walking up the stairs for the first time and hearing him describe what the place would be like. And sure enough, 50 gallons of black paint, a few dozen mannequins painted day glow, several dozen backlights l­ ater, we ­were open for business.”11 The venue began as a 1960s coffee­house on the second floor, above a Thom McAn shoe store, the space painted by the local kids in Day-­Glo colors and festooned with fishnetting and a large, fluo­rescent green mermaid that gave the space its name. As a regular patron Albee Tellone remembered, “It was an incubator of musical creativity. . . . ​It was a place that allowed for the creative juices of young musicians to flow freely.”12 The club was envisioned as part of the larger counterculture, with showings of avant-­garde films and art. “The weird ­thing about it, and the cool ­thing about it, was that it was a place to get t­ hings or­ga­nized,” remembered one regular. “Like any kind of activist type of event. ­People would come from all over the place to Upstage and bring flyers, so you knew what was g­ oing on in New Brunswick. Back then, New Brunswick was the other ­music spot in New Jersey. And it was strange, you’d have Black Panthers coming over t­ here and dropping stuff off. You know what’s ­going on with them and ­things. Organ­izations that ­were anti-­ establishment and stuff.”13 Soon, the Potters’ vision expanded to the third floor, where they created ­ usic and began the jam sessions for which a large open room for loud rock m the venue is still remembered. In March 1968, the Asbury Park Press reported on the opening of the Upstage Club as “a new discotheque-­coffeehouse-­ nightclub ­here, for young ­people too old for teen-­age clubs and too young for bars.” Potter told the Press, “I feel it’s time to treat them as grownups. . . . ​ But ­there’ll be no booze and no pot!” Annual dues for club membership was $12. The Press described the decor as “pop art collages and psychedelic designs painted on black walls with paint that glows ­under the ultra-­violet lights.” And the article concluded by reiterating that Tom Potter would not tolerate any



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drug use: “At the top of the stairs is a glowing poster in which Smokey the Bear warns, ‘All grass fires w ­ ill be put out of this joint!’ Mr. Potter is adamant in his aversion to marijuana. ‘I ­don’t feel it’s necessary to get turned on,’ he says.”14 Although ­there is no evidence that ­people smoked pot inside the Upstage Club, ­there is also no reason to believe that Tom Potter’s perspective persuaded anyone to abstain from the countercultural drug of choice. “Tom and Margaret Potter had a dif­fer­ent vision and it was multi-­layered,” according to Albee Tellone. “No drugs or drinking ­were tolerated and Tom ruled with an iron fist. . . . ​They wanted the young p­ eople to have a place to go and dance but also a place for musicians to stretch their imagination. . . . ​ They had a choice w ­ hether to hang out with the ‘Folkies’ in the Mermaid or go upstairs to dance or listen to an all night jam. It was the only public eatery with ­music that was open ­until 5am.”15 Tom and Margaret created a space where young p­ eople could hang out, and they fed many an urchin for f­ ree in the wee hours. Margaret’s spaghetti seems to have kept a w ­ hole generation alive. “­There was no place anywhere like the Upstage,” remembered David Mieras, a club regular. “That place was totally in a league of its own. It was very, very dif­fer­ent. It was a ­really avant-­garde place, very art-­oriented, individualized and where ­people found an identity. It was like your club. Th ­ ere was no liquor ­there, but you’d identify it as your club. Most ­people had passes to get in. . . . ​We could care less about getting into a bar ­because we had the Upstage. It was the greatest place. I mean, we just had so much fun t­ here it was incredible.”16 An Upstage regular, Robbin Thompson, remembers the space as a product of the times. “­Every city and town in the 60’s and early 70’s had a place that was, in its own way, like The Upstage,” claims Thompson. “It was a gathering place for the musicians of the community, a place where the ‘hip’ could go and not get hassled for their left of center views or the length of their hair. It was also a place where ­those who pretended to be normal ­humans workin’ a regular 9 to 5 could go and be what they r­ eally wanted to be.” It took someone older to recognize the need and to bring the vision to life. “It was always run by a person that was a ­little bit older than us, a ­little bit hipper than us. Someone who knew that when they w ­ ere younger t­ here was a need ­ ere amongst friends that for a place where we could get away, feel like we w understood. A place where ­there was a non-­parental ear ready to listen and give advice.”17 Tom and Margaret created a type of space that was rarely found outside major cities, and in that space arose a unique scene. The counterculture

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was bursting into the national consciousness as a phenomenon, but hippies still felt—­and ­were treated—­like outsiders. For the hippies, the Upstage became a refuge from harassment by the “greasers” or the cops. “Remember,” Robbin Thompson notes, “­there ­weren’t a lot of places you could get into with long hair, and we all had long hair.”18 At 11:00 p.m. the youngsters ­under eigh­teen would be kicked out of the third floor b­ ecause of local curfew laws (though they would occasionally sneak back in ­behind the backs of the bouncers black Tiny and white Tiny), retreating to the protective space of the Green Mermaid ­under Tom and Margaret’s watchful eyes. The third-­floor space would shut down for an hour from Midnight to 1:00 a.m., and reopen with live m ­ usic. During the hour, musicians would go out for air, visit a bar, and, no doubt, despite Tom’s stern decree, smoke some pot or indulge in what­ever other drugs ­were available. Returning at 1:00 a.m., and joining with the other musicians who w ­ ere filing in ­after their own gigs, the musicians would be assigned a spot by Tom. Tom was the acknowledged patriarch, adored, respected, and even feared, but now over forty, abrasive, and of a dif­fer­ent mindset from that of the young ­people. It was Tom who encouraged ­every new idea with a “ ‘Sure do it.’ . . . ​ He would make you seize the initiative to make it happen, he would give you the environment, and he would give you the support and you had to come through and do it.”19 But it was Margaret, the “gravel throated, chain smoking tough cookie guitar player,” who became the creative force ­behind the evolving environment.20 With her as the charismatic leader, Margaret and the Distractions acted as ­house band, while also playing the w ­ hole Jersey Shore scene. “It was Margaret who encouraged ‘open jamming’ when the scheduled bands w ­ ere on break and usually the entire last hour or so from 4am to 5am was reserved for jamming,” remembers Albee Tellone. “It was Margaret who made us feel at home ­there. She was the reason we came back night ­after night and braved the bellowing of a tipsy Tom. She was the helmsman at the wheel of a turbulent ship. For the guys and gals that worked t­ here, she was like a big s­ ister or even a sort of den ­mother. She made sure we ­were happy ­there. Lots of times she invited us over to her apartment for spaghetti and meatballs.”21 Tom, too, is credited with feeding many a starving kid or musician at the Green Mermaid, but Tellone recalls, “You never knew if he was g­ oing to hug you or kick your ass out the door. . . . ​Margaret always watched over us younger musicians.”22



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And Tom ran the show, assigning time slots and assembling the jams. Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez claims, “Tom’s the one that co-­ordinated the ­whole ­thing. You would come ­here with your band and gotta go to Tom and see if you could play. He’d say, ‘What do you play?’ ‘I play bass.’ ‘Ok, go over ­there and talk to Vinny for a minute ’cos ­you’re playing with him.’ He w ­ ouldn’t let the bands play together.”23 Sometimes full bands would play, but often, and especially as the night wore on, jams would evolve, with players slotting in and out without the jam even stopping. The folklorist Susan Etta Keller notes that the Upstage offered an opportunity “for the type of informal musical interaction that was not available elsewhere. It was jamming that provided the special, largely nonverbal connection that set the community apart. Jamming was less structured than the song-­oriented ­music normally played. . . . ​It also allowed musicians to play with ­people outside of their band, and for ­those without bands to have an opportunity to play. . . . ​The jamming provided new, less formal, and perhaps more comfortable sources of community for ­these individual musicians.”24 The most distinctive feature of the Upstage was the wall of speakers. The musician John Mulrenan described how Tom put the sound system together: ­ ere was a hallway ­behind the stage that went into Tom Potter’s office and the Th back of the stage was a plywood wall he had erected. He had a bunch of used guitar ampheads that he’d buy from kids. ­They’d tell him, “I gotta sell my amp.” He’d say, “Ok, I’ll give you 70 bucks kid.” So he had about five of the old Fender guitar heads up ­there. And then ­people would bring him a speaker, like an old car radio speaker or what­ever they wanted to sell to make a ­couple of bucks. He would take a saw and just saw a hole in the plywood, take wood screws, screw the speaker to the wall and then just jump it over to the other speakers with two wires. So you had this wall in back, it was all random speakers wired up to ­these ampheads with no rhyme or reason. And every­body would just come up and plug into the amps and play. The amps w ­ ere hooked up to the back speakers with just wood screwed into the back wall. ­There was pieces of plywood just hanging ­there. It was speakers not being enclosed in an ­actual enclosure. All of ­these dif­fer­ent weirdo speakers, half of them blown and stuff.25

Billy Ryan helped put the system together, selling Tom his two 58 Fender Basement Tweed amplifiers—­“ They ­were and are still the finest guitar

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amplifiers that money can buy”—­that Tom took out of the original boxes put them in the wall. ­ ere ­were 4 outputs in each of the Fender Basements. Now you had 8 outTh puts and 8 guitar players could play at once! And for the speakers he has got the 10’s ­there. So he’s got eight 10’s which a normal amplifier had and then he took all t­ hose 8 inch for mid range and he wired it all up to t­ hese two 50 watt two Fender basement amplifiers. So he had a 100 watts r­ unning all of t­ hose speakers. He might have had a PA plugged into the other speakers so that ­whole ­thing was a wall of guitar sound and the public address system all at once.26

“The sound was just God awful good,” according to Big Danny Gallagher.27 “What made the Upstage dif­fer­ent than the rest was the fact that from a musician standpoint it was set up for anyone to walk in and play with the greatest of ease ­because the amps and speakers ­were already ­there, set up and built into the wall of the stage,” remembers Robbin Thompson. “It was an awesome ­thing. Any musician could walk in with their guitar or what­ever and just plug in to the floor or the wall and rock! . . . ​It was like a rock n roll testing area.”28 A coterie of regulars developed, supplemented by a stream of newcomers, youngsters, amateurs, and rank amateurs. Blues provided the framework, a s­ imple formula for all to riff off of, and the basis for much of the guitar-­based rock that dominated the era. Margaret Potter understood the dynamics of how the ­music provided a way to create a scene: “Blues is a very feeling kind of ­music . . . ​­you’re given three dif­fer­ent guitar players, same blues progression and ­you’re g­ oing to get something dif­fer­ent. Alright, put five up ­there and ­you’re ­going to get five dif­fer­ent interpretations and ­they’ll all be right, ­because it’s—it leaves so much room for freedom.” And blues rock is as ­simple a musical formula as t­ here is, allowing both the beginner to enter the jam and the virtuoso to explore, create, and express. Thus, the m ­ usic itself became the foundation for the scene. As Keller concludes, “Ideally, this mirrored, and per­ hole t­oward its haps helped constitute, the attitude of community as a w members.”29 Although Tom was nominally in charge, it appears, in retrospect and memory, that Margaret steered the situation, and she was dedicated to creating a “spirit of inclusiveness” and tolerance: “I think that, that’s a camaraderie, that in other words, you w ­ eren’t trying to fight musicians; you had musicians



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tuned in, trying to make you better. . . . ​And that forms unbreakable ties.”30 As Tom envisioned, hanging around, w ­ hether in his back office drinking beers from his “beererator” or in the Green Mermaid eating sandwiches or up on the third floor, on-­or offstage, became the foundation for a scene devoted to ­music and a way of life. Jamming onstage cemented ­those bonds, as Margaret discovered continually, I ­can’t begin to tell you the ­things that happened. On stage. Instantly. Boom, and ­you’re like, “Oh my gosh, listen to this!” You know, it would come out of nowhere. . . . ​They ­couldn’t believe that it happened, something happened that was so tight and so together, in an instant. And, you walk off stage, and, and you surprise yourself, let’s put it that way. You surprise yourself, you know, you say, “Oh wow.” You know, you’d be playing it, and you’d look at the other guy on the stage and see the smile on his face and you knew, see, you know what I’m saying? You knew, and you’d say, “Whoa, listen to this,” and you ­were d­ oing it, but you w ­ ere still saying listen to this [laughs]. It’s quite a feeling.31

This is not to say that the scene was fully demo­cratic. ­There was clearly, as Sonny Kenn, already Asbury’s most accomplished musician, discovered, a “pecking order . . . ​and if every­body saw you could play, it was cool.”32 To ­those who ­were just honing their chops, the scene could be intimidating. “I remember ­going to the Upstage, but I was not good enough, I would say, to be quite frank, to get up on stage with t­ hose guys and play,” according to one regular, Robert Santelli. “The competition at the Upstage was so keen, so intense, that you ­really had to be a good player.”33 Another teen remembered, “Sneaking out my bedroom win­dow on a regular basis, I would meet up with kids from Bradley, or Deal, e­ ither at the pavilion, or at the Boardwalk or along the way and go to the Upstage. Getting on stage was not always easy in the beginning, for t­ here was certainly a pecking order starting with the regular players and working its way to the new guys.”34 Generally, however, ­there was a mixture on stage, as Tom Potter orchestrated ­things to foster the musical interchange. Often, musicians had to earn their place, demonstrating their improvement over time, so that eventually they would be invited into the ­later jams with the better musicians. It depended, also, on what instrument you played. Guitarists w ­ ere a dime a dozen, so ­there was keen competition. Drummers, however, ­were at a premium, so Bobby Williams and Vini Lopez played with all the better musicians. Keller

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notes that a “relatively small circle of ­people” came to form the core of the better jams: “Members of the group w ­ ere not necessarily snobbish, but amidst all the openness of the establishment, they did find a relatively small circle of p­ eople with whom they felt the most comfortable.”35 The inclusiveness ­really built around the dedication, even more than skill. ­Those who showed up nightly, who threw themselves into the scene, who devoted themselves to the ­music and the lifestyle, became the core. The club itself demanded as much, since ­things did not ­really start rocking ­until ­after 1:00 a.m. “We would finish our gigs and stroll up h­ ere with our axes and play ­great ­music,” according to Gerry Carboy. “What more can you say? That’s what this place was about—­camaraderie.”36 Santelli recalls, “If you w ­ ere too young or you had to work the next day . . . ​staying up to 4 or 5 in the morning was a difficult t­ hing to do, so you r­ eally had to be dedicated to go to the Upstage.”37 And ­those musicians who did so w ­ ere generally the ones whose playing continued to improve. “That’s where I learned,” Kevin Kavanaugh remembers. “It’s one ­thing to learn how to play on your own. It is another ­thing entirely to play with other guys and develop the chemistry it takes to work together. That’s how you perfect your craft, listening to and working together with other musicians.”38 They would all make up the audience for each other, so that ­there was a kind of equality between performer and viewer that was absent in regular clubs. “When ­you’re working a lot, you never ­really get to interface with anybody e­ lse other than the guys ­you’re playing with on the gigs,” recalls Carboy. “You go up ­there and you see guys you ­haven’t seen in months and say ‘Hey, how you ­doing? ­You’re off ­today . . . . ​Yeah!’ At 3 ­o’clock ­there would be guys that just finished gigs on the boardwalk and t­ hey’d be strolling in with their axes and stuff.” It was “a g­ reat scene for musicians meeting musicians.”39 And at 5:00 a.m. they would clean up, maybe walk over to the pier and go fishing at dawn. Indeed, most of the regulars ­were not just t­ here as musicians but as members of the club and full participants in the scene. They are the ones who helped Tom realize his artistic vision by painting the Day-­Glo designs on the walls and building the stage. “Some of them spent e­ very night, ­every weekend the club was open, and they worked and they played together, and I mean for nothing, food, and for the love of ­music.”40 As they used to joke, the Upstage was the cheapest ­hotel in town, as you could stay ­there all night and then spend the day sleeping on the beach. “I got a job working the door t­ here



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and my w ­ hole life changed,” claims Big Danny Gallagher. “I mean, rock and roll as a lifestyle had never come in front of me before. I saw it and said, ‘Well, this is it!’ ”41 Southside Johnny came to the jams religiously: I lived a half-­mile away so I would go over t­ here just about e­ very night. Sometimes I’d go over right from work if I worked late at the post office, which I did for ten months, and I’d still have my post office stuff on. We used to do eight shows a night, eight sets a night, 40–45 minutes each. We w ­ ere making songs up b­ ecause we ran out of material. I mean, no ­matter how many songs you knew you’d do a week’s worth of eight shows a night. And you d­ on’t want to repeat yourself, do the same songs over and over again-­screw that! So we would make stuff up.42

In a history of popu­lar ­music scenes in New Jersey, Asbury deserves a key place, of that ­there is no doubt. And the Upstage Club earned its spot, even if it had not produced any famous names. But we cannot talk about this story—­and possibly not many would be all that interested in this story—­ without Springsteen (“The Boss”). Through all the layers of hagiography and nostalgia, one t­ hing shines through: from the moment Bruce Springsteen arrived in Asbury Park, it was clear to all that this man was something special. Just about ­every account carries the same tone . . . ​W ho is this guy? Springsteen had been playing in Jersey bands for a while, so some ­people already knew of him, but he arrived, looking gaunt and raggedy in his torn jeans with a rope ­belt, sometime in the wee hours of February 23, 1969, and immediately made an impression. “Is it okay if I play my guitar ­here to­night?” Bruce asked. “Go ahead and plug in,” Margaret Potter replied.43 Springsteen had visited the Upstage a week or so previously to scope out the Downtown Tangiers Band and immediately figured, “This is the coolest place I’ve ever seen in my life.”44 He also knew that this was a place he could display his talents. So, he plugged his new goldtop Les Paul into an amp and turned it up: “I came to stun.”45 And stun he did—­instantly. “That quickly, he took over the room,” Tom’s son Geoff Potter remembers. “And within five minutes, you ­couldn’t hear a sound except for his guitar,” as all eyes and ears turned to the stage.46 Springsteen, with no need for false modesty, writes in his autobiography, “I plugged into Tom’s mighty wall, stood back and kicked into ‘Rock Me Baby,’ cutting loose with every­thing I had. I fried the paint off the place with all the guitar pyrotechnics and wizardry my eighteen-­year-­old fin­gers

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could muster. . . . ​I watched ­people sit up, move closer and begin to pay serious attention.”47 Margaret ran down to the second floor looking for the local guitar legend Sonny Kenn, telling him, “­You’ve gotta get up h­ ere!” Watching Springsteen jam with the locals Big Bad Bobby Williams on drums and Vinnie Roslin on bass, Kenn thought, “ ‘Oh my God, he’s got it!’ Somehow that skinny kid was larger than life!”48 Another regular concurred: “You c­ ouldn’t take your eyes off of him. Bruce had this presence. The hairs on the back of your neck would tingle. He had an instinct, a gift.”49 As the playing continued, Vini Lopez—­who had already been talking about Bruce—­took over on drums and Danny Federici joined on keyboard, for another forty-­five-­minute jam. According to the Springsteen biographer Peter Carlin, “The crowd members who ­weren’t pasted against the stage w ­ ere dancing and spinning across the floor. When Bruce sweated through his T-­shirt, he peeled it off and tossed it, splat, into the corner of the stage.”50 Springsteen writes, “The insane wall of speakers was vibrating so hard I thought the w ­ hole place might just cave onto the shoe-­store sales floor below. It all held for thirty something scorching minutes of guitar Armageddon, then I walked off.”51 ­After the jam, basking in the afterglow downstairs in the Green Mermaid, Vini Lopez blurted out what he had been thinking of since seeing Bruce play the week before: “Oh geez, let’s make a band.”52 On that night Child was born. ­Later renamed Steel Mill, the band was Springsteen’s first including Upstage regulars. Over the coming years he would form the Bruce Springsteen Band and, fi­nally, the E Street Band including musicians he had met and jammed with at the Upstage. Margaret Potter, like most every­one e­ lse, vividly recalls that first encounter with Springsteen, though some of the details differ in her vari­ous tellings of the story: I certainly do remember when Bruce came in for the first time and when I heard him play guitar. That I’ll never forget. We ­were all on stage playing and we took a break. This young man came up to me and said, “The man downstairs said you ­wouldn’t mind if I played your guitar.” I said, “Oh sure no prob­lem.” He said, “Well, would you show me the system, you know, how it works?” and I said, “Sure!” I brought him up on the stage and just explained how the system was set up. To the right of the stage was a booth so I went and sat down on the booth just to listen and see if he got the idea of the system.



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Well, in very ­little time, I knew he was gonna have no prob­lem. It was amazing. The only t­ hing I can tell you is that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. He played 15 notes and I thought, “Whew! Let me go downstairs and get some ­people to see this boy!” and that’s what I did. I went downstairs and I d­ on’t remember exactly who was in the back room, I know my husband was t­ here. I’m pretty sure that Steven Van Zandt was ­there, Vini Lopez was ­there maybe John Luraschi, but I’m not sure. And I said, “Look guys, I think you better get upstairs ­because this . . . ​I just have a feeling that he is gonna be ­great. . . .” ­There ­were a lot of guitar players around and when he came back and played you knew it was pretty obvious, and we ­were waiting, looking to see what the reactions of the ­people ­were. Of course they ­were musicians ­there and they ­were just like, “Where did this guy come from?” and that was kind of the general feeling.53

Perhaps the cult of Bruce is so strong that ­there is a Jersey-­wide code of omerta, or maybe some Stalinist historical revisionism, but it is impossible to find one eyewitness to Bruce’s arrival at the Upstage who was anything less than stunned. Southside Johnny said: One night, I walked up and t­ here’s this long-­haired guy with a gold Les Paul. He’s telling this long involved story about g­ oing to Catholic school and how they mistreated him and all that stuff. But one day they had m ­ usic appreciation and ­Sister Mary brought in a B. B. King ­album and the hook was that the nuns at Saint Catherine taught me the blues or something like that. He was just so charismatic and funny and good, playing ­great guitar and his lyr­ics ­were coming out and they w ­ ere ­these tons of phrases. I thought who the fuck is this guy? Immediately I felt territorial! But it was like wow, he’s ­really good.54

Guitars dominated the rock scene at the time, and the most intense competition among musicians in the age of Hendrix, Clapton, Townshend, and Page, was among the lead guitar players. “You’d go to Upstage and ­there was like three keyboard players,” according to Tony Amato. “You had David Sancious, Danny Federici, and Kevin Kavanaugh, the original keyboardist from the Jukes. That was the keyboard players. Drummers ­you’ve got Bobby Williams, Vini Lopez, you had about fifteen drummers. You know, a thousand guitar players, five hundred bass players. ­Because at the time Led Zeppelin was big, Hendrix was big and power trios.”55

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Although Bruce would go on to fame as a songwriter and front man, he was originally recognized for his work on guitar. “Tom Potter introduced me to Bruce up at the Upstage,” remembers John Mulrenan. “The first time I sort of noticed him was when Southside Johnny was downstairs playing an out of tune 12-­string guitar. So, I’m watching Johnny play this song, but I’m hearing ­great guitar licks coming out—­lead guitar, beautiful melodies. I’m like what the hell is that? So, I walk around the back and Bruce is sitting on the steps, in back of the stage so nobody can see him, playing a Les Paul guitar. I was like wow! This guy can r­ eally play.”56 Billy Ryan similarly recalls the moment he was sitting in the club and Carl “Tinker” West said to him, “ ‘ Wait ’til you hear this guy I just discovered him!’ I’m thinking ‘what could he be?’ And he plays and he’s d­ oing ­these t­ hings, which I’d heard of guitar players ­doing and I was just blown away.”57 And Bruce’s legendary charisma and star power w ­ ere immediately apparent. “One time I saw him at the Upstage and he just blew the crowd away,” Mulrenan continued. He had real long hair, half-­way down his chest and no shirt on. His hair was in front of his face so you c­ ouldn’t even see his face and he looked like he weighed about 80 pounds or so. I was in the audience watching him. He was d­ oing mostly Allman ­Brothers songs. And then I saw what looked like heat waves coming off of him like energy. Then I felt the crowd around me reacting to ­those waves. They ­were reacting to him in a way I’d never seen anybody react to anybody on stage before. That’s when I r­ eally started paying attention to him.58

Springsteen’s presence was felt throughout the scene at the Upstage, even when he was not performing. Among the kids who hung out at the Green Mermaid, Bruce had a mystique. David Mieras from Ocean Grove explained: We’d sit over in the corner in the dark like l­ ittle wise guys. I remember the first night Bruce came in. He must have seen all of us kids from somewhere before ­because he came in and he had t­ hese dark sunglasses on. It was so funny. I’ll never forget it. He came up and his hair was real long, he had dark sunglasses on and he had like a fringe jacket, I believe. I looked at him and said wow, who is that? He just came up to the top of the stairs and stood t­ here. It was like who’s this guy?59



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The teenage girls developed a game where they tried to tap the males in the butt with their spoons, calling themselves “Spoon Ladies,” and Bruce was their favorite target.60 At the Green Mermaid, Bruce played with Albee Tellone’s Hired Hands in the acoustic jams.61 Springsteen himself delivered a tribute to the Upstage in the liner notes to Southside Johnny’s debut 1976 a­ lbum I D ­ on’t Want to Go Home. Recognizing the value of the community of musicians, Springsteen noted, “­There ­were a lotta musicians t­ here ’cause the bands that came down from North Jersey and New York to play in the Top 40 clubs along the shore would usually end up their regular gig, along . . . ​with a lotta dif­fer­ent guys from the local areas. Every­body went ­there ’cause it was open ­later than the regular clubs and ­because between 1 and 5 in the morning you could play pretty much what­ever you wanted, and if you ­were good enough, you could choose the guys you wanted to play with.”62 And if you ­weren’t all that good you could still jump into the jams. It ­wasn’t only about skill, but about community and rock and roll as a way of life: ­ ere ­were ­these guys . . . ​Mad Dog Lopez, Big Danny, Fast Eddie Larachi, his Th ­brother ­Little John, Margaret & The Distractions (house band), Black Tiny, White Tiny, Miami Steve, and assorted E Streeters, plus the heaviest drummer of them all, in terms of both poundage and sheer sonic impact, Biiiiig Baaaaand Bobby Williams, bad­ass king of hearts, so tough he’d go to the limit for you ­every time, all night. You w ­ ill never see most of t­ hese names on another rec­ord besides this one, but nonetheless, t­ hey’re names that should be spoken in reverence at least once, not ’cause they ­were ­great musicians (truth is, some of them ­couldn’t play nothin’ at all), but ­because they ­were each in their own way living spirit of what, to me, rock’n’roll is all about. It was ­music as survival, and they lived it down their souls, night ­after night.63

­ usic as survival—­a phrase as good as any to capture the spirit of SpringsM teen’s ­whole c­ areer, a spirit that was nurtured at the Upstage. As Bruce wrote, “Some of them ­couldn’t play nothin’ at all,” but some ­others ­were extremely talented musicians who would go on to build ­careers making ­music, and a few would even achieve fame, most notably including Bruce’s own E Street Band and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Although he had already had a c­ ouple of bands before arriving at the Upstage in 1969, it was ­there that he began to pull the threads together.

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Quickly establishing himself as a regular, he was paid $20 a night by Tom to perform, and he jammed regularly with the locals. It was at Upstage that Bruce pulled together a musical revue called “Doctor Zoom and the Sonic Boom” that consisted of many of the regulars, including some of the waitresses and bouncers, performing cover songs amid much spectacle. Asked to open for the Allman ­Brothers at a local club, Bruce de­cided, according to Kevin Kavanaugh, “I ­don’t r­eally feel like ­doing it, let’s just every­body come on, ­we’ll all get together and ­we’ll do this then.”64 Bruce regularly jammed from 1969 to the club’s closing in October 1971, taking the lead in presenting what ­were known as Bruce Springsteen Jam Concerts. His band Steel Mill played its farewell shows for the Upstage on January 22 and 23, 1971.65 As with Disc-­O-­Teen, the comfortable scene could not survive the turmoil of the era and the real world forever. The beginning of the end for the Upstage came with the Asbury Park riots the week of July 4, 1970. Asbury Park had been segregated since its founding in the nineteenth c­ entury. Built by the businessman James A. Bradley in 1871, the town had experienced tension over racial mixing from its inception. As early as 1885, the Asbury Park Daily Journal pronounced the town “a white p­ eoples resort” and complained in an editorial that “the colored ­people are becoming a nuisance.” Although the Journal acknowledged the rights of African Americans to the vote and the rule of law, “when it comes to social intermingling then we object most strenuously and emphatically.” Henceforth, “the colored folk” would be welcome as servants and employees, but not as beachgoers and promenaders along the boardwalk.66 Controversy flared from time to time, and African American leaders pushed back continually, but by 1970, Asbury Park, like most cities in the United States was riven with in­equality and racial discrimination, with blacks relegated to the West Side neighborhoods, away from the beach. African Americans ­were recruited to Asbury Park as ser­vice workers in the resort industry, but segregation and discrimination kept much of the black population in poverty, living in dire rat-­infested housing, with poor employment opportunities.67 White flight had begun in the 1960s—as it had in cities all across the country, fostered by government policies promoting sub­ urbanization, racist bank lending policies, and discriminatory real estate practices—­but the pro­cess accelerated ­after the outbreak of vio­lence against property that erupted in 1970. When on July 4, two teen dances took place and then emptied out into ­ ere called, crowds formed and disthe streets, b­ ottles ­were thrown, cops w



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persed.68 The riots began at a youth dance at the West Side Community Center and spread across the business district. Over the course of the coming week, vio­lence flared regularly along and around Springfield Ave­nue. By the end of the week, 180 ­people had been injured (including 15 police officers), 167 had been arrested, and $4 million of property damage had been tallied. While most of the damage was on the black West Side, the damage to Asbury’s reputation was irreversible. Destroyed buildings had still not been replaced de­cades ­later. Tourists ­stopped coming. Locals and neighbors ­stopped shopping downtown.69 The riots of 1970 in Asbury Park nearly destroyed the downtown and shook the ­music scene. The Upstage had only a tenuous relationship with the black world of Asbury Park and the black musical world. Obviously, the m ­ usic played at the Upstage was rooted in the African American tradition, and t­ here ­were musicians who worked both worlds. But the rock world was resegregating musically, and Asbury was no exception. Although Motown and much Top-40 ­music ­were still mixed, guitar-­based rock was moving away from the dance ­music that was developing out of R&B and soul—­w ith Southside Johnny a glaring exception. Photos from the Upstage show a degree of racial integration, but the scene was largely separate from what was happening in the black clubs. “I was playing on the other side of the tracks then,” remembers J. T. Bowen: “The Orchid Lounge, the Turf Club, all ­these clubs w ­ ere on the Black side of town.”70 The scholar Craig Hansen Werner argues that Springsteen resisted this trend: “At a time when white rock was sounding whiter and black m ­ usic was sounding blacker . . . ​, Springsteen refused to surrender the populist energy of sixties rock and soul.”71 Springsteen acknowledged, “­There was racial tension” in the rock world and around the Asbury Park scene, “but it was also a place where ­people mixed. I walked into the Upstage and saw [the black pianist] David Sancious. I met [the black sax player] Clarence [Clemons]. We ­ usic—­that was something that had one of the first integrated bands in rock m grew up around Asbury Park.”72 David Sancious remembers feeling wary, conscious of the very real pos­si­ble consequences of crossing the racial borderline of Asbury Park. “I was ner­vous about it,” Sancious admits. “It ­wasn’t a place where black p­ eople went.”73 Used to playing with R&B bands at the Orchid Lounge, he did feel welcome at the Upstage when he arrived as a fifteen-­year-­old keyboardist, finding a “sense of community” built around the common love of rock ’n’ roll. The Upstage provided an oasis from the

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outside world where ­there was “no funky racial vibe at all” among the musicians.74 The riots themselves ­were experienced only slightly by the Upstage crowd. Springsteen watched the West Side burn from atop a ­water tower on the roof of the surfboard factory he was living in on the outskirts of town.75 Some vividly remember getting out of the club as the riots began and that the doorman got a shotgun from his car.76 Tom and some regulars created a barricade on the stairs out of bar chairs, deterring invaders.77 Jim Fanier recalled, “I was sitting by the first landing of the stairs holding a shotgun listening to the noise outside and the door opened. Someone had a lit liquor ­bottle, Molotov cocktail, I said ‘GO AWAY!’ They ran off without shutting the door!”78 The club was closed for the week, as the town was ­under curfew at sundown. Bobby Williams remembers the effect of the riots on the scene at the Upstage: “I remember when the riots hit in 1970, that was sort of the beginning of the end. You could almost—­you almost knew the end was coming. . . . ​ ­Things ­were never the same ­after that. They just ­weren’t. Of course, you ­didn’t have ­people coming down h­ ere like they used to.”79 Joe Petillo was stunned by the riots and their aftermath, which he described as “a surprising dagger in the heart of musicians around ­here ­because this was an environment where color never mattered.”80 In the sheltered world of the club, the kids could ­ fter the riots, that was no longer escape the realities of the outside world. A pos­si­ble, and they w ­ ere confronted with a real­ity that they had been able to ignore. Another regular remembers that although “it was all peace and love in the Upstage,” the broken win­dows and burned out buildings along Springfield Ave­nue stood as reminders for years to come. Fi­nally, Tom and Margaret split up. Tom Potter, whose drinking had progressed to a point that worried some locals, took off for Florida, and Margaret continued to live and make ­music in Asbury. Tom’s grand­daughter recounts the story: The decline of Asbury presented citizens with few options. They could stay and strug­gle to keep their local business afloat, or they could leave and find new ways to survive. As much as they loved each other, Tom and Margaret found themselves on dif­fer­ent sides of the line. A ­ fter 10 years of blissful marriage, the obstacles that came with two de­cades between them fi­nally took their toll. Margaret was a bright young w ­ oman, deeply rooted in the town, and enthusiastic about Asbury’s comeback. Tom was alone with no f­ amily members still in the state,



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approaching retirement, suffering health prob­lems, and now unemployed. By the next year with what money he had left, his bags w ­ ere packed and ready to go. No amount of persuasion could change Margaret’s mind. They parted ways, each genuinely expecting the other to follow.81

They let the lease lapse at the end of October 1970, with the Bruce Springsteen Band playing the penultimate night. The downtown, already in decline, was decimated as beachgoers, tourists, and shoppers stayed away, and parents told their kids to steer clear of Asbury Park. It did not all happen at once, and Asbury continued to have a musical tradition built around clubs. The Stone Pony opened in 1973 and Bruce, Southside Johnny, and many, many o­ thers continued to play live ­music. If much of the Jersey Shore scene fostered cover bands rather than experimentation, the clubs still provided the places where scenes could develop. Sonny Kenn captures the dynamic: “Clubs always seem to be the place where ­music—­and when you talk about a folk tradition, b­ ecause rock m ­ usic ­really is folk, it’s not passed down by written notes, it’s passed down by word of mouth, and rec­ords, and hearing, which is a traditional way of ­music carry­ ing on—­those places that allowed that to happen become fewer and fewer, or situations become tighter and tighter, pretty soon the candle dwindles and blows out. Till some other spark lights it up again, and it starts over.”82

6 • “DRUMS ALONG THE HUDSON” The Hoboken Sound

As the rock ’n’ roll business consolidated and corporatized in the 1970s, with touring bands playing fewer and larger venues, the rock world was now one of stars and fans. Fans ­were consumers of distant and larger-­than-­life rock icons. The system worked, at least for the majority of rock fans who listened to album-­oriented rock on FM radio and bought tickets to the closest arena months in advance of touring rock acts. And the system worked for the rec­ord companies that churned out product and earned their profits. But by the mid-1970s, pockets of discontent arose across the rock world. If Beatlemania in 1964 had unleashed a generational id, the punk rock that blasted out of CBGB beginning in 1974 trickled out its influence much more slowly. It is difficult to remember now, but the Ramones ­were revolutionary. Their look was revolutionary. Their sound was unlike anything on the airwaves at the time. They ­were ­either feared as a threat or maligned and dismissed as a joke. It did not all begin with the Ramones. In Detroit, the Stooges and MC5 had already pioneered a rampaging rock sound, and the connection to the White Panther Party had established Detroit as a scene. In Cleveland, the Electric Eels and ­others had been toiling in local obscurity. Even in New York, Suicide had already signaled something new, as a bridge from the 1960s’ days of the Fillmore East and the Velvet Under­ground’s tenure at Andy Warhol’s Factory. But the New York scene took off when the Ramones and ­others 112



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established residency at CBGB on the Bowery in New York in 1974. Although the musicians w ­ ere hardly oblivious to the marketplace and the lure of rock stardom, what distinguished the scene t­ here was the commitment to experimentation and making ­music that felt real and au­then­tic in an era when rock ­music was increasingly complex and produced, distant and pretentious. ­After New York came London, and punk rock became an international scourge and phenomenon in 1977. The tabloids screamed about “the filth and the fury,” and m ­ usic fans around the world took away an ethos that had become alien to the bloated, corporate rock showbiz world: do it yourself (DIY). The Sex Pistols may have set out to destroy rock ’n’ roll, but they inspired young ­people to pick up instruments and form bands wherever they went and whenever a major media agency reported on their threat to civilization. In the late 1970s, young ­people in small pockets around the world began to form bands and scenes in a loosely connected network. In Hoboken, New Jersey, a scene thrived throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, bringing in­de­pen­dent, under­ground m ­ usic to the local community and a national audience. An unlikely spot for a musical re­nais­sance, Hoboken was “the misused back alley of some other, better place,” a place where “each neighborhood has its own weather.”1 Never much of a place to call home, from “its earliest conception, Hoboken was a place mainly to get into and then out of again.”2 Like most urban areas in the United States in the 1970s, the Mile Square City had seen better days, no longer enjoying the status of a major port city, as it had since World War I when more than 3 million soldiers passed through on their way to the Eu­ro­pean front. Shipbuilding and manufacturing jobs ­were plentiful through the mid-­twentieth ­century, as the American industrial economy expanded. In an all-­too-­familiar tale, manufacturing left for cheaper land and nonunion ­labor, shipbuilding moved overseas, as the housing stock deteriorated and the population fled for the suburbs. The once-­fabled port, the site of On the Waterfront, became all but abandoned by the 1970s, as shippers moved to deeper harbors. Hoboken “had the lowest per capita income, highest unemployment, the lowest education levels,” in the county, according to Robert Foster, the executive director of the Hoboken Historical Museum. “Every­thing was bad, especially morale.”3 As real estate prices crumbled, however, new groups, particularly immigrants from Puerto Rico, arrived. Among the new arrivals ­were young

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bohemian types, priced out of New York, or simply looking for something a bit outside the denseness of Manhattan but still within striking distance via the PATH train. The young immigrants to Hoboken built a scene that served as a satellite to the rock world of Manhattan, a node on the national and international under­ground rock network, and a self-­contained musical home. Across the United States, in the wake of punk’s explosion in New York and London, new m ­ usic scenes arose, part of what Michael Azerrad calls “a cultural under­ground railroad.”4 Azerrad builds his brilliant story of the “American indie under­ground” around some impor­tant bands and their rec­ord labels—­from Black Flag and the Minutemen to Fugazi and Beat Happening. The bands are impor­tant, indeed. But ­those bands arose within scenes that built up locally, with an infrastructure of clubs, zines, rec­ord stores, and hangouts for the ­people to gather and form ­those bands and labels. Hoboken nurtured its own scene, while also helping to create the “cultural under­ground railroad” for touring bands. Although it is always dangerous to ascribe origins to one par­tic­u­lar moment or place, perhaps the Hoboken scene begins with Maxwell’s—­the tavern that became the home for dozens of local bands and an iconic stop for touring indie bands. Its co-­owner, Steve Fallon, remembers scouring the city for a space and noticing that Maxwell’s Tavern, at the corner of Hoboken’s main drag Washington Street at Eleventh, was closed whenever he went by. “I fi­nally found the owner and asked, ‘When the fuck are you open?’ He said, ‘Between shift changes at the Maxwell House coffee plant down the road: 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.’ The factory workers would have a shot and a beer in between shifts.”5 Fallon, his ­brother, s­ ister, and her husband bought the building in 1978 for $67,000. When the Fallon ­family purchased the tavern, cleaned it up a bit, and began booking bands, the locals who ­were ­there for the cheap brownstones had a place to play and “word quickly spread—­about the club, about Hoboken’s cheap rents and easy commute to the city—­and musicians and artists started moving in, which in turn sparked the city’s eventual gentrification.”6 With a population u­ nder 50,000 Hoboken experienced decline in a peculiar sort of way in the 1970s. Having escaped the large-­scale upheaval and riots of Newark and Asbury Park, Hoboken had what might be called a genteel decline. “I was afraid to walk by ­there by myself back then,” the Hoboken native Alice Genese remembers. “On any given day, ­there’d be ­people crawling on the sidewalk, falling down drunk, starting fights. It was scary



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when you w ­ ere a young girl.” The dozens of bars along the fourteen blocks of Washington Street marked the city as tough, working-­class territory. But, although it had always had its share of corruption, crime, and prostitution, the city was hardly devastated. “I grew up a tough kid with eyes in the back of my head,” Genese recalls. “When I grew up ­there, this city was very blue-­ collar and ­people ­were very hard-­working, but t­ here was a lot of love. Neighbors watched out for each other’s c­ hildren. ­People took care of one another.”7 Rents ­were incredibly cheap as the housing stock deteriorated, with heat and hot ­water often lacking. Apartments above Maxwell’s went for $55 a month. The neighborhood was perhaps “sketchy,” but it was not exactly dangerous. Therefore, for t­ hose who wanted urban life and creativity but maybe ­were not ready to brave the maelstrom of 1970s New York, Hoboken was welcoming, despite the ever-­present “scent of burned coffee” from the plant down the road.8 James Mastro, who joined the Bongos when he arrived in Hoboken (and moved into an apartment above the club), recalled, “In a weird way, it was easier to tell my parents I was moving to Hoboken than to New York.”9 Glenn Morrow, who moved into a six-­room flat across from the coffee factory for $65 a month, remembers, “Hoboken was more innocent than the East Village, not quite as debauched. We ­were suburban kids who fell in love with the third Velvet Under­ground rec­ord.”10 In fact, to many of the new inhabitants, “Hoboken felt safe and worlds away from Manhattan,” more like the 1950s towns they remembered from childhood or tele­vi­sion.11 Richard Barone remembers arriving in Hoboken, “It was as if the train had transported me not only far from Manhattan, but far from the current year as well, turning the clock back 20 years or so in ­those 20 minutes. A total time warp. The town that time forgot . . .”12 “A friend of mine came to my apartment,” recalled Glenn Morrow. “She said, ‘­There’s a bar around the corner that wants to have live original ­music of a modern variety.’ I was stunned. The only room we knew about at the time in New Jersey that would have us was out in Dover. Now, ­here was a place to play right where we ­were living.”13 Morrow had put together a band called “a,” and went to see if they could rehearse in the back and play some gigs at the tavern: “I gave Steve Fallon a cassette tape. He listened and said, ‘Come back Saturday night, ­you’re ­going to play three sets.’ ”14 The day of his first gig, Morrow’s car was stolen and he performed his brand-­new song “Someone Stole My Car” that very night.15 The “a” band built on the influences that ­were bubbling up from the under­ground in the late 1970s, as their Village Voice

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ad seeking an “inventive” guitarist signified—­“Talking Heads, TV [Tele­vi­ sion], Reggae, Eno.” Richard Barone answered the ad and connected with Morrow, Rob Norris, and Frank Giannini.16 ­After “a” disbanded, Morrow founded the Individuals and Rage to Live, and the o­ thers went on to create the Bongos, eventually taking on guitarist James Mastro. Maxwell’s started booking bands, at first without even a stage or a sound system, eventually setting a stage in the back room that held two hundred ­people. “It ­wasn’t ­really a rock club,” according to ­Will Rigby of the dB’s. “It was a working-­class bar with bare lightbulbs on the ceiling, and when we played, some of the patrons laughed at us. We ­didn’t sound like Bob Seger or what­ever was on the radio.”17 Almost instantly, a scene grew up around the club. “Applying a fresh coat of paint, polishing up the back-­room bar, and adding a sound mixer/DJ booth, the place was transformed,” according to Richard Barone. “Our practice sound system and the casual air of community that existed at the beginning remained throughout Maxwell’s heyday years. It was rare, then and now, to experience a venue where the separation between performer and audience was less distinct. The lines blurred. ­Because the newly built stage was low to the ground, and the room so small (200 ­people was jam-­packed), the synergy was palpable. What happened off the stage was often just as entertaining as what happened on.”18 Everywhere a new subcultural scene develops, all the ingredients are already ­there but one. It takes just a spark to ignite. “The day we opened,” according to Steve Fallon, “we ­were still trying to get hinges on the front door. ­People ­were literally walking over us to get into the bar. Hoboken was ready.”19 As the scene grew, musicians and bohemians flocked to the town for its ­music, including members of Yo La Tengo, who “wanted to move to a place where we could live a ­little better. And where we could walk to a club”—­ and  where they could share a ­whole ­house for u­ nder $200 a month.20 ­Because of the cheap rents, artists could afford to make art. “For p­ eople to ­really be creative they ­can’t be consumed ­every minute by how they are ­going to make money to pay high rents,” remembers Karyn Kuhl. “It was an organic ­music scene ­because ­people could be more relaxed about that.”21 Soon, bands like the Individuals, the Bongos, the dB’s, the Feelies, and Yo La Tengo became staples on a burgeoning scene that developed an international reputation for “The Hoboken Sound.” Prob­ably a misnomer, a product of fevered A&R dreams, a journalist’s hook to create a story, similar to what real estate agents do to create a desirable neighborhood, the Hoboken



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The Individuals at Maxwell’s, 1980. (Courtesy of Jim Testa.)

Sound involved jangly guitars that could go poppy or edgy depending on the band. One scenester sums up, “Bands from Hoboken w ­ ere poppy but slightly weird. Yo La Tengo became synonymous with Hoboken, which seems right, ­because they had beautiful songs and weirdness happening at the same time.”22 It is a story repeated throughout the history of rock ’n’ roll: one band creates a stir, and the business ­people descend, gobbling up ­every local band, searching for the next big ­thing, the “New Liverpool.”23 Hoboken had its moment, but never a big one. That is just as well ­because ­those big moments never ­really amounted to much. The grunge scene of Seattle in the 1990s was emblematic. ­After Nirvana vaulted to the top of the charts with Nevermind in 1991, the locusts arrived. Asbury Park in the 1970s had its day, a­ fter Bruce conquered the world and the Stone Pony became mecca. But in 1985 the local Channel 5 aired an hour narrated by Bob O’Brien on “The Hoboken Sound” that tried to capture the spirit of the m ­ usic scene. The Hoboken scene rests on a dif­fer­ent level as a scene that never quite burst into mainstream consciousness but had a good twenty-­year run (maybe even more) as a vital musical hub producing vibrant local ­music and channeling

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rock m ­ usic from all over the world as touring artists dropped in. In the 1980s, ­there ­were similar scenes, all with their own local inflections, across the continent, in places such as Athens, Georgia, Minneapolis, the San Francisco Bay Area, Lawrence, Kansas, Vancouver, British Columbia, and many o­ thers. As mainstream rock radio stayed with the album-­oriented rock that had emerged in the 1970s, college radio across the country created another set of links for new sounds to spread. MTV’s inauguration in 1981 placed bright-­colored clothing, wild hairdos, and bouncy beats at the center of pop ­music. The A&R reps came and they found some fodder. Some of the Hoboken bands fit what they ­were looking for—­clean, bouncy, fun, with hooks. ­Others ­were a bit too edgy and dissonant for the mainstream m ­ usic business to take a chance on, but a number of them found their niche in the emerging indie scene network. No band broke through to superstardom the way Bruce Springsteen had from Asbury Park, but many bands still play ­music, often together with the same old friends, de­cades ­later. The Bongos, with Tiger Beat good looks, the requisite teased and gelled hair, not even afraid of a l­ittle eyeliner, had the look and sound of the next big ­thing, with power­ful hooks, jangly rhythms, and crafty lyr­ics. Signed to RCA ­after several singles and their debut ­album Drums Along the Hudson, the Bongos went the way of most indie bands who jumped at a major label offer. Their next ­album sank, in an era (just like most e­ very era) when the corporate ­music business was afraid to miss out on what was happening but was too tame, too dependent on finding an exact copy of the last big t­ hing, to actually expend any capital promoting fresh sounding m ­ usic. Matt Pinfield, a DJ and aspiring indie rock musical influencer, fell in love with “their vigor and visceral delivery of the pop side street.” Pinfield’s influence could only arrive ­after Nirvana’s a­ lbum overturned all the rock business conventions, when he became the host of MTV’s 120 Minutes in 1995. In the 1980s, however, “In an era where g­ reat indie rec­ords had no chance of breaking through to the mainstream, I was shouting from the tops of the buildings telling ­people . . . ​‘Listen to this! The world is changing!’ ”24 But ­others thought the band itself had sold out, so that, although the video for “Numbers with Wings,” was nomi­ usic Award for Best Direction, Trouser Press nated for an MTV Video M deemed the ­album mostly “adequate but dispensable.”25 The rock critic Robert Palmer summarized the dilemma facing musicians in a 1987 review, outlining how the indie scene had “split into two mutually exclusive camps, one emphasizing intensity and artistic integrity, the other



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Jersey Beat no. 2, April–­May 1982. (Courtesy of Jim Testa.)

willing to compromise in order to reach a broader audience. The Bongos w ­ ere signed to a major rec­ord label and proceeded to make slick, overproduced rec­ords which vitiated the raw vitality the group had originally displayed. They failed to achieve major commercial success, and they lost some of their original fans in the pro­cess.”26 The Cucumbers, led by Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried turned out power pop that was unabashedly commercial and listener-­friendly. Having met in

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college, they began to make ­music together, including busking through Eu­rope and landing in Hoboken in 1981, and playing their first gig at Maxwell’s opening for the Individuals before the end of the year. For their first show, their friends tossed cucumber slices. Afterward Fallon warned them, “Make sure your friends d­ on’t come back with cucumbers, ­because the smell of cucumbers and old beer is awful.”27 By the ­middle of the de­cade, the ­couple was married and videos of their song “My Boyfriend” and a cover of “All Shook Up” ­were getting MTV airplay, with Rolling Stone calling their work “unpretentious boy/girl bop . . . ​as fresh as it is irresistible.”28 The band even got the approval of Robert Christgau in his influential Village Voice Consumer Guide, where he called “My Boyfriend” “a girl-­group masterstroke for a feminist age” and concluded about Deena Shoshkes, “The more I hear of her vivid sweetness the more sexy and unpre­ce­dented it seems.”29 The critic Jon Pareles writing in the New York Times similarly found their songs “winsome on top, sinewy down below. . . . ​ Th ­ ere’s a danger that such bare-­faced songs could turn cute or cynical, but the Cucumbers rarely succumb. More often, ­they’re both direct and artful—­ and as sincere as a smart pop band gets.”30 No band left a greater legacy than the Feelies, who by 1978 ­were being called “The Best Under­ground Band” by the Village Voice. The Feelies rejected the star-­making machine and even pulled back when their universally well-­ reviewed debut ­album Crazy Rhythms came out in 1980 on Stiff Amer­ic­ a Rec­ ords. Most obviously influenced by the Velvet Under­ground and the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” the band churned out dreamy and hypnotic, yet melodic, dirges. The band was attracted to Maxwell’s ­because “it was the complete opposite of what we had experienced in New York. It was more lowkey and we found it more genuine and much more suitable for the band.”31 They faced the dilemma of how much to grasp for the mainstream version of success, which all rockers ­were supposed to be in it for. ­After the success of Crazy Rhythms, the band shut down its public profile for five years (­later they took another seventeen-­year break). As they told one disbelieving interviewer when they reemerged in the mid-1980s, “Well, we ­don’t mind being a cult band, all our favorite bands are ­ ere cult bands.”32 On the other hand, “bands that we considered our peers w signed to major labels. It kind of seemed like that situation where you gotta keep moving up,” according to Glenn Mercer. In 1985, Steve Fallon branched out from Maxwell’s to start the Coyote Rec­ords label in order to release local



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artists, including 1985’s aptly titled compilation Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood Soon. Members of the Feelies had recorded for Coyote with their side proj­ects ­because of their relationship with Fallon: “It felt r­ eally comfortable to us. It was just basically a one-­man operation and just real good communication between us and the p­ eople t­ here.”33 The band itself signed with Coyote, but that label had a deal with A&M Rec­ords, which though major, had a slightly more personal feel. As Glenn Mercer explains, “They operated, it seemed at least to us, like an in­de­pen­dent label would: kind of small, close-­knit, almost a ­family type of atmosphere.”34 But, as happens all too often, that label was bought by another, the ­people whom the Feelies knew w ­ ere suddenly gone, and the band was adrift. The scene was not just a collection of bands. Maxwell’s formed the hub, but a ­whole constellation of other institutions grew up to make the scene happen. The New York Rocker, for which Glenn Morrow and Ira Kaplan wrote, published coverage to spread the word, especially their November 1982 issue on Hoboken, “Bands across the ­Water: Exploring a Model Pop Community.” The magazine, and zines like Jim Testa’s Jersey Beat, also provided a gestalt, a sense of the bigger picture, as they situated the Hoboken scene within a larger universe of indie rock that was being built. Named as a pun on “Mersey Beat,” the zine was produced in typical DIY fashion. “I wrote it on a manual typewriter, cut and pasted the stories and pictures onto typewriter paper, and had it run off at a printing shop that did business cards and stationery,” Jim Testa recalled. “Then I brought the pages home and stapled them together myself. I interviewed more bands and went to a lot of shows.”35 Bar/None Rec­ords was founded in 1986 by Tom Prendergast, who released an ­album by Glenn Morrow’s latest band Rage to Live and brought him on as a partner. Bar/None became an impor­tant local label, just as with clubs, zines, college radio, and the other infrastructure of the indie m ­ usic world, local musicians, fans, and entrepreneurs took to making their own institutions to make the scene happen. The label released ­albums by They Might Be ­Giants, Yo La Tengo, Freedy Johnston, and dozens of indie artists over the next three de­cades. Situated in a beautiful 1889 industrial landmark, the Hoboken Land Building, near the downtown post office, Bar/None ran in typical indie DIY fashion. Mary Marcus became its first intern and employee: “I called Glenn and said I wanted to be an intern. He asked me what that was. I said I would work for f­ ree. He told me to come in.” When she arrived, the

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phone rang, she was told to answer it. “I did. It was for Glenn. I took a message. Glenn came in. I gave him the message. He hired me.”36 Kate Jacobs recorded for the label in the 1990s, and noted the down and dirty methods. “Glenn had a reputation as a frugal maker of rec­ords,” she recalled. “He had a favorite saying that we often quoted in our recording sessions over the years: ‘Is the amp on? Is t­ here a mic near it? Roll tape!’ ” The recording artist also participated in all the dirty work necessary to build the scene. “I commuted to my day job on the PATH, and when my ­album came out, I would often stop at the Bar/None office on my way home to help with copying press releases, drilling holes in promo jewel cases, stuffing jiffy bags, stamping, and carry­ing boxfuls of packages to the PO,” Jacobs recalled. “I spent many after­noons sitting on the floor with Tom, stickering and stamping mountains of jiffy bags g­ oing to press and radio.”37 The labels distributed nationally through a growing network of in­de­pen­ dent distributors that got the rec­ords out to DJs on college radio stations and local rec­ord stores. Hoboken, thus, had a full-­fledged musical scene in the mid-1980s, just as other scenes w ­ ere springing up across the country. Glenn Morrow worked with the network of distributors: “In the early 1980s a new group of in­de­pen­dent distributors came into being as consumers discovered the latest releases from new wave and punk rock rec­ord labels as well as artists on Eu­ro­pean labels. . . . ​Someone was always g­ oing out of business which made labels fearful of putting all their eggs in one basket.”38 Local rec­ord stores stocked the discs, and in downtown Hoboken, Billy Ryan and Bar/ None’s Tom Prendergast opened Pier Platters, an impor­tant place for fans to find ­music from the growing international indie m ­ usic scene.39 Hoboken, perhaps unique in local scenes, had a tight relationship with bands from other similar local scenes. Many bands, especially t­ hose that came ­ uman Switchfrom similar scenes, made Maxwell’s a second home. Ohio’s H board became practically a local band. ­There seemed to be a special connection to the Athens, Georgia, scene, which produced similarly quirky and idiosyncratic bands that combined pop and avant-­garde sensibilities. When Pylon played Maxwell’s three times in 1980, they informed the locals to watch out for an even better band on its way—­R .E.M. Peter Buck from R.E.M. eventually bought an air conditioner for the club’s back room. The Minneapolis bands Hüsker Dü and the Replacements loved the club. Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould moved from Minneapolis to Hoboken in 1989 ­after his band broke up ­because that’s where Maxwell’s and Steve Fallon ­were.



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The Replacements specialized in legendary, drunken train-­wreck shows wherever they went, and Maxwell’s was no exception. Jim DeRogatis recounts their first visit in 1983, “­After a ­great if messy set, most of the band left the stage, but leader Paul Westerberg wanted to keep ­going. A few punks in the audience wearing mohawks and leather jackets hopped onstage, Westerberg sat ­behind the drums, and they played ‘Louie Louie’ for another 20 minutes. Replacements, indeed.”40 Steve Fallon remembers their appearances fondly, “The Replacements loved Maxwell’s. Tommy Stinson brought his ­mother. They never had a bad show ­here. Maybe b­ ecause they knew I’d stay up ­until 5 a.m. and drink with them.”41 “­There was one Replacements show when it got so hot chairs actually melted,” Todd Abramson recalls of another legendary set. “It was discovered afterward that the attendance clicker had broken, and ­they’d let in something like 380 ­people. Capacity was 200.”42 The worlds of musicians, critic, promoter, and the like intertwined. So Ira Robbins began as a writer, was hired to do sound for Maxwell’s (even though he claims not to have known how to do sound), and then founded the stalwart Hoboken band Yo La Tengo.43 Glenn Morrow similarly came from the New York Rocker to his bands in Hoboken to his partnership in Bar/None Rec­ords. “Hoboken had a very collaborative scene, of bands producing other band’s ­albums, designing each other’s t-­shirts and tour posters, getting each ­ ere all involved with other on shows,” according to Richard Barone. “We w each other, and Maxwell’s was at the center of it all. It was a very non-­aggressive venue that ­didn’t impose a style on bands or audiences. You ­didn’t have to be anyone but yourself at Maxwell’s, you w ­ ere good enough, and that inspired creativity.”44 The indie rock world was more open about gender and sexual roles than the mainstream world. Punk scenes in London, New York, and Los Angeles, ­ omen, and fluid sexual idenfor example, ­were heavi­ly influenced by strong w tities ­were welcome, though not always explic­itly. The scenes ­were not without sexism and discrimination, but in comparison to the rest of American society, they ­were ideal places to explore and find oneself in a supportive environment, especially for ­those struggling with their identity. Bob Mould writes: “On June 23 [1984] we played our very first show at the ­great Hoboken club Maxwell’s, which soon became a standard stop on the indie rock cir­cuit. The club owner was a very gregarious fellow named Steve Fallon. Steve’s gaydar went off on me immediately, and I fi­nally had somebody in a big city who knew gay, who knew I was gay, and who I could learn from. Maxwell’s

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Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, on the left, and Steve Fallon at Maxwell’s, 1984. (Courtesy of Jim Testa.)

was gay-­friendly, but it ­wasn’t a gay bar. It was just a scene that happened to have gay ­people in it.”45 Richard Barone remembers, with some annoyance, how Fallon would always greet him with “Hey faggot.”46 “Maxwell’s had no par­tic­ul­ar sexual identity,” according to Fallon. “Yes, I was out. But I ­wasn’t your typical fag. Every­one who worked at Maxwell’s was a ­little eccentric. That was the beauty of it.”47 Barone recalls, “The club was extremely bisexual. The same way a president affects the tone of a country, the owner of a club affects the clientele. Who did I sleep with? Every­one.”48 Similarly, with the involvement of w ­ omen, the Hoboken scene was hardly perfect, but definitely more open. Too many bands had their token ­woman ­ omen began to take full citibass player. But in the indie world of the 1980s, w zenship in rock ’n’ roll, expanding on the pioneering punks of the 1970s and paving the way for the Riot Grrrl movement and indie explosion of woman-­ dominated m ­ usic in the 1990s. Gut Bank, which had a much harder sound than most local bands, was nevertheless welcomed. Composed of three young ­women and one man, the band also pushed against the gender norms of the rock world, even the indie rock world that seemed to relegate ­women to bass



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player status. “Steve Fallon r­ eally took us u­ nder his wing and was so supportive, even though we w ­ ere just kids, r­ eally,” Alice Genese remembers.49 The guitarist Karyn Kuhl adds, “We ­were a noisy, post-­punk band that ­didn’t r­ eally fit the so-­called ‘Hoboken Sound.’ But we did have three born-­and-­raised Hobokenites—­Alice, Tia and Mike—­which in essence made us the most Hoboken of all Hoboken bands.”50 But the w ­ hole infrastructure of the local scene supported the band, including Bill Ryan at Pier Platters. Alice Genese remembers how they “helped foster young talent in a way that I think is rare to find. . . . ​And especially as [young ­women] . . . ​we ­were embraced and welcomed and supported.”51 Janet Wygal, who played in the Individuals and other bands, remembers the scene as “still pretty male dominated,” but “a very safe environment” to explore and be accepted as a musician,52 even if it did have—­“this is a nightclub ­after all”—­only one ­women’s toilet, with a line often longer than the line to get into the show.53 It is nearly impossible to find a complaint by a musician about Maxwell’s. It started with Steve Fallon and extended to Todd Abramson, who took over the booking in the mid-1980s and partial owner­ship in the mid-1990s. “Todd was like my younger ­brother,” according to Fallon. “We had the same tastes. More importantly, we d­ idn’t do the five-­band, screw-­you, open-­a-­calendar-­and-­ write-­a-­name-­down t­hing. We wanted the bills to have some coherence.”54 Universally, bands appreciated the way they ­were treated at the club. Bands continued to play at the club long ­after they could sell out larger venues. “When the band first came ­here, perhaps they ­weren’t that well-­ known yet,” Abramson notes. “But we treated them well. And they remembered that. And then the next tour, when they w ­ ere playing larger rooms, you know, let’s go back to that place; they r­ eally took care of us.”55 Fallon knew from his days managing bands how dif­fer­ent Maxwell’s was from the norm: “I think the bands could actually ­really feel comfortable—we tried to make them feel comfortable. Whenever you went on tour with bands—­I also managed bands—­you’d walk into a club, no one would greet you, you’d kind of stand around for an hour, and then the cranky, hung­over soundman would come and basically throw shit on the stage. So we r­ eally made an effort not to be that way. . . . ​I think it all comes down to that they w ­ ere returning to us ­ ere giving to them.”56 Imagine the difference it made for a touring what we w band “that had lived on peanut butter sandwiches for weeks” to be “treated to a g­ reat meal from the kitchen (Fettuccine Maxwell’s a specialty) and free-­ flowing John Courage Ale on tap,” as Jim DeRogatis noted. “And for years,

Karyn Kuhl of Gutbank at Maxwell’s, circa mid-1980s. (Courtesy of Jim Testa.)



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groups that d­ idn’t have a place to crash w ­ ere invited to stay in an apartment upstairs.”57 It was clear that Fallon and Abramson cared about the ­music and took “a curatorial approach . . . ​that respected the intelligence of the audience & performers alike,”58 and the cultivation of the scene. It might have been the only club in the world that actually fed the bands, even the opening acts. “You could tell they ­really cared about ­music ­there,” remembers one musician. “The opening bands ­were always carefully selected. The bills ­were never overcrowded. The set times ­were not too early or too late. The vibe and atmosphere was always perfect.”59 One local writer concluded, “Steve and Todd had the vision to imagine a place that would treat musicians with re­spect and hospitality, pay them fairly and treat them with dignity. That was rare back in the Eighties and Nineties; it’s virtually unheard of t­ oday.”60 Fans loved the club ­because it embodied the collaborative spirit of the indie scene. “Maxwell’s was less about trying to make a scene, and it was just a place to hear ­great ­music,” said Kaplan. “It had the feeling of being more of an adjunct to our basements.”61 Bands ate in the front-­room restaurant with every­one ­else, and they had to make their way through the crowd to get to the stage. The clientele ­were mostly “lifer m ­ usic freaks” who ­were treated, like the musicians, with re­spect in a club that was “less concerned with ‘hip’ and being pretentious.”62 The vibe, all too rare in the indie world and especially absent in New York, created an “intangible bond between the bands and the club itself and the ­people who came.”63 The zine writer Gerard Cosley, who saw bands in hundreds of clubs around the world, concluded “Maxwell’s felt like a place that was owned & staffed by persons who thought the players and paying customers ­were friends and peers. As opposed to, y’know, targets & tools in the all-­important strug­gle to sell more beer. . . . ​It was a genuinely big deal to see live ­music in a space where e­ very single person on the premises was glad to be ­there.”64 The writers Jim Testa and Jim DeRogatis started as young e­ ager fans and aspiring journalists who also ended up in vari­ous bands—­and their stories illustrate how the scene created a community, but also s­ haped individual identities, especially for young ­people coming of age. In 1980, unemployed, trying to find his way ­after graduating college with a degree in journalism, “with very l­ ittle idea of what he wanted to do with his life,” Testa, “wandered into a small bar in Hoboken to see a band called the Bongos.” It turned out to be the moment that changed his life. Maxwell’s

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“­wasn’t dark and dangerous and fairly forbidding like CBGB. It d­ idn’t have velvet ropes and snooty doormen like Danceteria and the Mudd Club. It was like this magic ­little alternate real­ity ­were every­one knew every­one e­ lse, and every­one ­there was fabulous.” Miraculously and inexplicably, Testa found his home, starting with a chat with Ira Kaplan and then a meeting with the band—­something you could never do at an arena rock show ­unless you w ­ ere a groupie. Soon, Testa was playing softball and bowling with the gang of Maxwell’s regulars. Along the way, he toured with bands, “slept on floors and couches and met musicians and made friends all across this country, in more cities than I can remember. I’ve shared a tour van with the Pink Lincolns in Florida, rocked to the Queers in Eugene, Oregon, dined on the Mission District’s best burritos with Pansy Division in San Francisco, watched a Cubs game at Wrigley Field with Ben Weasel, discussed Kerouac with Mike Watt, traded quips with Dr. Frank, shared a stage with Ted Leo, and seen the Wrens play a Hoboken loft naked.” Testa built a life résumé that would have seemed impossible to dream of as an aspiring reporter. And he concluded: “None of that happens if I d­ idn’t walk into Maxwell’s to see the Bongos back in 1980.”65 Jim DeRogatis shares a similar story that begins with him sneaking into Maxwell’s “as a precocious 18-­year-­old in 1982.” Th ­ ere he “­really learned what it means to be a fan—to love ­music so much that you can sooner imagine ­going without food or oxygen.” Although punk was “supposed to tear down the artificial walls between the artists and the audience, it never ­really did,” especially for an aspiring rock critic from Hudson Catholic Regional High School in Jersey City. “You always had to worry about fitting in at C.B.G.B., just as you had to wait to be chosen to get past the velvet rope at Danceteria or the Mudd Club, and just as you always had to fret about being ‘cool enough’ to belong at pretty much any other club. That never was the case at Maxwell’s, for musicians or for fans.” At Maxwell’s, DeRogatis “saw so many life-­changing shows . . . : countless gigs by local heroes such as the Feelies, the Bongos, the dB’s, Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth, as well as per­for­mances by touring acts like the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, R.E.M., the Minutemen, Robyn Hitchcock, Alex Chilton, Wire . . . ​I could go on, and on, and on.” And from ­there, he, like Testa, launched a c­ areer as a journalist that took him to the farthest reaches of the rock world.66 Melissa Pierson, another young writer, but not a rock world scenester, similarly understood the tremendous and serendipitous good fortune of being



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a regular at the club. “You knew you ­were witnessing the height that art was wont to reach,” she wrote in her memoir The Place You Love Is Gone, “and you understood it, ­every microscopically thin layer of intention sitting on another.” Watching bands at Maxwell’s “was like having Mozart come to play a ­little something in your living room.”67 Pierson’s memoir laments the passing of that special time, but she eloquent depicts how “pro­gress hits home.” In fact, Maxwell’s itself provided the seed for its own demise. For, at the very time that Steve Fallon was looking for property, so w ­ ere developers and ­speculators. The very cheap rents that brought bohemian youth also led landlords to begin to convert rental stock to condos. A series of tenement fires swept through the city during the club’s early years, as arson became a vehicle to displace the working poor from increasingly valuable properties. By the early 1980s, “real estate offices appeared like mushrooms in wet woods.”68 Successive waves of gentrification completely remodeled the city. As early as 1987, the Cucumbers, in a song that Christgau considered “the best song ever written about gentrification or Hoboken,” ­were singing of “My Town” with a mixture of irony and wistful nostalgia.69 My town, the sign says it’s home of Frank Sinatra . . . ­ ere ­were bars all along the river Th Back then they called them watering caves Now it’s just a piece of somebody’s money Now it’s just a piece of somebody’s money In my town, my town Is this the same Place it used to be Was ­there ever A time when land was f­ ree ­Don’t you want ­Don’t you want to live ­here? . . . This lovely town Has killed a few souls It may yet do

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Away with a few more ­Don’t you want ­Don’t you want to live h­ ere?70

Jim DeRogatis recalls, “Throughout the period that I covered the city as a beat reporter for the Jersey Journal in the mid to late ’80s, it was a vibrant mix of Italian and hispanic working-­class immigrants and younger bohemians driven out of Manhattan by escalating rents. It was a ­great place to work, live, and create—­too ­great, as it turned out.”71 By the 1990s, Hoboken was already becoming unrecognizable. Fallon sold the club, and its new ­owners turned it into a trendy brewpub. Thankfully, Abramson and his partners bought the club back, and Maxwell’s had another good, long run. Richard Barone captured the slow, inevitable end of the scene: “As Hoboken grew, gentrified, and its rents increased, the innocence and unique characteristics fell away one by one. Instead of mom-­and-­pop stores, the chains came in. Sidewalks seemed suddenly overcrowded. The blue-­collar families ­were replaced with a new wave of aggressive professionals; artists and musicians ­were squeezed out to make room. Now, rowdy sports bars overtook Washington Street as weekend traffic and parking became unbearable.”72 “I realized it was over,” Karyn Kuhl remembers, “when I ­couldn’t go out of the ­house on a weekend night without having to deal with packs of ‘drink till you puke in the street’ types.”73 Maxwell’s closed for good in July 2013, with a series of sold-­out retrospective shows by the old stalwarts, including Yo La Tengo (who had played yearly Hanukkah shows), the Feelies, and the Individuals. Fittingly, “a” and the Bongos played the final show, with numerous guests from Maxwell’s scene. The New York Times noted upon the club’s closing, “But most of Maxwell’s neighborhood has long since been taken over by luxury high-­rise buildings named for the thrumming factories that they replaced.”74 The old Maxwell House factory, source of the famous odor of Hoboken, was converted into multimillion-­dollar condos. Construction was ­under way as Abramson de­cided to close down the club—­not b­ ecause he had to financially, but ­because the time just seemed right to let go. “The place I knew is gone; the place that retained history’s marks is gone,” Melissa Pierson wrote.75 The scene had come and gone.

CONCLUSION Making the Scene in the Twenty-­First ­Century

­ ere are so many other scenes that have nurtured New JerseyTh ans’ love of ­music over the years. If you frequented the Meadowbrook in the 1940s, where Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Prima, and all the ­great big bands of the era played, no doubt you are filled with nostalgic memories. Or you might have listened to Charlie Barnet play “Pompton Turnpike,” the tune dedicated to the club on the live show on CBS radio between 1937 and 1941, “Coming to you from Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook, Route 23, the Pompton Turnpike in Cedar Grove.” Or maybe you danced ­there when it was briefly resurrected as a new-­wave disco in the 1980s.1 Somebody needs to write a book about the h­ ouse concert scenes in New Jersey, especially the extraordinary Live @ Drew’s in Ringwood. Since 1997 Drew Eckmann has hosted artists such as Robert Gordon, Alejandro Escovedo, Kinky Friedman, the Blasters, and Graham Parker (who has played 13 times) for over 250 living-­room concerts at his ­house on Cupsaw Lake.2 If you hung out at the Dirt Club in the 1980s, you and your friends have some stories to tell. The ­music at Albert Hall in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, a folk, bluegrass, and country scene that dates to the 1950s, is beginning to get the documentation and analy­sis that it deserves.3 Since 1975, students at Rutgers University have staged the New Jersey Folk Festival.4 The Jersey Shore has a long tradition of cover bands that have their own 131

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fan bases and even make a living performing live m ­ usic.5 The Capitol Theatre in Passaic, home to legendary rock shows in the 1970s, deserves its own book, if only to capture the vibrant life of the folks who toiled ­behind the scenes. Newark’s jazz scenes have been captured nicely in a series of books by Barbara J. Kukla.6 I was sorry not to write about the 1980s–1990s punk rock scene at City Gardens in Trenton in this book. But the magisterial No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens, by Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico, and the documentary Riot on the Dance Floor: The Story of Randy Now and City Gardens (2014) r­ eally cover it all so well.7 I would have just ended up stealing their material. New Brunswick’s scene, particularly its tradition of basement shows, has also had a lasting and ongoing influence. The Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives, founded by Christine A. Lutz, the New Jersey regional studies librarian, and Frank Bridges, a doctoral student at Rutgers, now has an exciting and growing archive of flyers, zines, and recordings.8 David Urbano’s VLH Films is chronicling the scene in a new documentary, Noisy Basements and Bars: New Brunswick, New Jersey’s Scene within a Scene.9 I conclude this book with a brief tour around my neighborhood where ­music scenes proliferate. My town is by no means perfect, but ­people move ­here ­because the community expresses a set of values that we share. Historically biracial, the town is still beset with too much segregation and racial in­equality, and the long-­standing character of the town is severely threatened by rising costs as the p­ eople who would traditionally have moved h­ ere can no longer afford it. But when it works, it r­ eally works. And m ­ usic is central to that. I can wake up any morning and start planning my musical day—­and I do not even have to leave the five-­mile radius of Montclair, my town of 37,669 in suburban northern New Jersey, thirteen miles from New York City, with the slightly obnoxious slogan “Where the Suburbs Meet the City.” If I am feeling particularly lazy, I need only walk a few doors up the block to Tierney’s Tavern, where upstairs the Fabulous Flemtones have been playing on the last Friday of ­every month since 1986.10 While cover bands are not ­really my ­thing, they play a pretty scorching version of “Sultans of Swing.” I have seen countless friends’ bands at Tierney’s, and my own band plays ­there regularly and hosts the annual “Thee Volatiles Punk Rock Holiday Extravaganza.” As many weekends as pos­si­ble, I stop in for BBQ and blues at Ruthie’s, a tiny place with outdoor seating when weather permits, where I have seen

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Charlie Hunter, Bobby Radcliffe, and the local rockabilly favorites the Eugene Chrysler Band more times than I can count. ­There are open mics weekly or monthly all over town, at Trend Coffee Shop, Tierney’s, and Java Love Coffee Roasting Co., weekly shows through the summer at Montclair Center Stage, other occasional DIY events at 73 See Gallery, the Notes from Home House Concert Series, Creativity Caravan, East Side Mags comic book store—­some of them staged through Indie Arts Montclair. ­These ­little gatherings incubate new institutions, of which some survive, and ­others fade out. Some ­will prob­ably close before this book hits the shelves, but ­others w ­ ill arise. In the mid-1980s, friends gathering regularly to share songs wanted to create a coffee­house vibe, where they could meet regularly, maybe host traveling artists. They ended up creating a lasting and impressive institution Outpost in the Burbs that connects the music-­loving public with local charitable institutions. Hosting shows at the majestic First Congregational Church and the Unitarian Church (where the seats are much more comfortable), the Outpost has presented a variety of Americana, folk, and rock acts. Founded in 1987 as a “non-­profit outreach organ­ization dedicated to building community through ­music, community ser­vice, and cultural programs,” the Outpost brings in legendary artists such as Judy Collins, Roger McGuinn, and Richie Havens, as well as newer con­temporary folk acts. About one hundred volunteers work in the community to put on the shows, which raise money for national and local charities such as Habitat for Humanity, Community Foodbank of New Jersey, and ­Human Needs Pantry. On Saturdays, Outpost volunteers run a soup kitchen serving one hundred p­ eople at the Church of the Epiphany in Orange.11 Gina Auriemma, the former president of Outpost’s board of trustees, claims, “The atmosphere is inviting and cozy. Artists feel like ­they’re members of a big ­family when they come to perform, and the audience feels the same way. Outpost is more than just a concert series—­it’s a community.”12 A number of the local scenes have been created by ­people gathering ­ usic, but also to lend their talents to serve the commutogether to create m nity. Parents Who Rock (PWR) was founded by Alma Schneider who just wanted to rock again while raising kids. It turns out that the town is filled with ­people in their thirties and up who have the talent and drive to play, but no longer fantasize about the rock star life (except maybe for t­ hose thirty minutes onstage). Staging shows at local venues like Tierney’s, the Montclair Art

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Museum, or Alma’s backyard, PWR raises money for arts programming in the local schools and brings together music-­loving boomers (and now millennials) to play covers and originals. The town has a pretty exceptional jazz legacy. The legendary bassist Reggie Workman has been lending his talents as a teacher to the extraordinary Montclair Acad­emy & Laboratory of Dance, Drum, Drama, run by Maya Milenovic Workman for twenty years. The Grammy Award-­winning bassist Christian McBride and the vocalist Melissa Walker host the Montclair Jazz Festival ­every August in Nishuane Park. The event is run by their Jazz House Kids, a community-­based educational organ­ization that has been teaching and spreading the gospel of jazz for fifteen years.13 If I am in the mood for something more intimate, I can hit Trumpets Jazz Club (since 1985) or the  weekly Thursday–­night jam session at DLV Lounge, where the owner George Marable has hosted live ­music since 1972, and where I am likely to see the smiling face of Bruce Tyler ­behind the drums.14 Bruce is one of t­ hose ­people who makes the m ­ usic scenes run, turning up in countless bands and jams, and serving on committees and boards for the (now defunct) Montclair Arts Council, the old Montclair Blues and Jazz Festival, the Montclair African American Heritage Parade and Festival, and much more. On June 21, the longest day of the year, the town takes part in Make M ­ usic Day, with dozens of acts performing throughout the day inside or in front of local stores. Put together by volunteers—­many of whom are the same ones who participate in the other events and organ­izations around town—­the event is part of a global cele­bration of ­music of the international Fête de la Musique, taking place in 800 cities across 120 countries (including 65 cities in the United States).15 The event began in France as an undertaking proposed by the minister of culture in 1982. As the event organizers explain, “Completely dif­fer­ent from a typical ­music festival, Make ­Music is open to anyone who wants to take part. E ­ very kind of musician—­young and old, amateur and professional, of e­ very musical persuasion—­pours onto streets, parks, plazas, and porches to share their ­music with friends, neighbors, and strangers.”16 ­ usic Day effort is led by Greg Pason, who seems to be The local Make M involved in ­every grassroots musical and po­liti­cal happening in town. Greg is the national secretary of the Socialist Party USA and has run for office as the Socialist Party candidate in New Jersey numerous times since the 1990s. ­ usic scene of He got his start in activism, antiracism, and the DIY art and m

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New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1980s and is a member of the ABC No Rio collective, for years booking Saturday punk matinees at the now demolished former home on Rivington Street of the “Culture of opposition since 1980.”17 ­These days you can catch him tooling around town on his yellow bike, connecting, organ­izing, and building community. All this just hints at the constant flow of m ­ usic in this town. And I have not even mentioned the Wellmont Theater, a beautiful venue restored to its majestic 1920s glory a de­cade ago. I have seen some g­ reat shows ­there, but the place does not seem to actually anchor a scene in town. The space demonstrates how a scene is not about just the bands that come through or the space that hosts them. It seems, so far, that the major corporate booking ­agencies that have tried to use the venue have not ­really figured out how to make a go of it. The first ongoing musical development at the Wellmont is the arrival of the Hillsong Church, which holds Sunday morning ser­ vices.  The  controversial, music-­heavy church has become famous for its ability to attract the famous, including Justin Bieber, who has been spotted around town.18 The immediate area around the theater is being redeveloped to include a large plaza, other arts spaces, and parking, but it remains to be seen ­w hether the  local scene w ­ ill be able to afford the rising costs of “market-­rate” rents in the area.19 If I dare cross the border into neighboring towns, I might head to the Oranges where an abundance of venues and scenes have developed over the past generation. Hat City Kitchen was developed by Housing and Neighborhood Development Ser­vices (HANDS) Inc., a local nonprofit devoted to making Orange “an inclusive city where p­ eople can and do choose to live and work.”20 I can catch some jazz at SuzyQues BBQ. On Tuesday nights, I can hit the blues jam at the Franklin Tavern, where I might catch Bettye Lavette singing with her husband Kevin Kiley, who has been r­ unning the jam since 2005.21 If I want to hear a bar band bang out three sets a night, ­ ittle Falls to the G ­ reat Notch Inn, a space so sacred that the I can head to L state is ­running its Highway 46 expansion around this 1930s-­era venue. And if I want some punk rock, I head to the Clash Bar in Clifton, still my favorite place to play and see bands. I have to venture just a few short miles more to Maplewood/South Orange to attend Rent Party on the second Friday of ­every month, situated within a similar community of active ­music producers and fans of all ages. I have seen some amazing shows at Rent Party, including the local power-­pop favorites

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Sad About Girls. I discovered the fantastic Karyn Kuhl Band t­ here. And I saw the legendary Wanda Jackson, as Joan Jett passed the bucket around to collect money to fight hunger in the community. Rent Party runs its own community garden and their BackPack Pals program provides lunches for one hundred food-­insecure kids weekly. I love Rent Party so much that I ­will not complain that they decline to book my band again ­after all ­these years. Back in Montclair, the teen­agers are continuing the tradition of creating community through ­music scenes. High school students put on shows monthly through a group called Terry’s Serendipity Café. Meeting ­every Wednesday eve­ning at 6:00 at the boat­house in Edgemont Park throughout the year, the teen­agers plan shows ­every month. ­Under the tutelage of Ed Carine, who seems to do sound or some other ser­vice at ­every musical event in town, the kids do all the work necessary to create a m ­ usic scene. The shows take place at the high school amphitheater, local churches, synagogues, and parks, with the kids working the door, keeping the peace, selling concessions, setting up the chairs and sound system, and performing. Started over twenty years ago by a group of kids shortly ­after a postal shooting in town left the community traumatized and the adults scared for their ­children, the kids wanted to take control of their own lives. Ed Carine remembered, “They had an assembly at the high school and they asked the students what they would like.” One student answered for a group of them: “What we want is a place to play ­music and listen to m ­ usic for us. Not a bar, and no age restrictions.” Ed has been teaching the kids how to run the sound board and then tells them to teach the other kids. He teaches, he listens, he offers suggestions, but other­wise, this is the kids’ scene. “So they make all the decisions. We meet for an hour a week, talk about how Friday’s event went, and what could be improved, what was good that we should keep, and what ­wasn’t good that we should change around.”22 The more adventurous young ­people might head over to the Meatlocker, a subterranean punk club as gloriously scummy as any punk club ever. Local and touring acts—­punk, hip-­hop, spoken word, hardcore, and beyond—­ perform in a dingy warren of rooms, some showing the metal walls as evidence of the former meat locker. The Meatlocker denizens see a space for the creation of a “a tight-­knit community of artists that looked out for themselves and ­others.”23 ­There are rumors of shows as far back as the 1980s, and bands have been rehearsing in the space for years. Peter August stumbled into the place while

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on leave from the military in the late 1990s: “I was home in NJ visiting some friends getting some drinks in Montclair and we saw/heard the makings of a punk show as we ­were walking past. We paid some weirdo a few bucks and went downstairs. It ­didn’t look much dif­fer­ent than it does now. It was a street punk band. Spikey hair, leather jackets, Doc Martens. ­Didn’t pay much attention to it, just thought it was cool that was happening.”24 He began to participate fully in 2005, ­after the closing of another local punk venue, the Bloomfield Ave Cafe. Peter captures the spirit of what it takes to keep a scene ­going: I remember that we ­didn’t ­really even like it at first. ­There was no decent sound system (still ­isn’t). The shows ­were sketchy (drugs, death metal kids that loved fighting every­one), but we had no other choice ­really. It was the only centrally located DIY space available and Roy rented it to us cheaper than what the halls could. Bathrooms break. If you work ­here ­you’re g­ oing to clean up ­human shit. ­You’re ­going to say to yourself, “Why the fuck do I do this for p­ eople that w ­ ill kick a toilet ­until it cracks in half?” Someone’s ­going to puke their heart out. If you d­ on’t clean it no one e­ lse is gunna.25

Occasional dustups with authorities and neighbors have shut the place down from time to time: “The Fire Marshall, well he ­doesn’t like us and no one blames him. We stuff a bunch of kids into a box b­ ecause if we d­ on’t ­those kids ­don’t have anything ­else.” Last year, a new tenant above the basement space did not appreciate the noise and annoyances that come with a musical venue, especially one that hosts punk shows. When the Locker was shut down, the kids flooded the new restaurant’s Yelp page with one-­star reviews and nasty (though often hilarious) critiques. Th ­ ere was a while when it seemed the Meatlocker might have come to its end. One local lamented, “Bands from all over the world have played h­ ere, it’s crazy how many p­ eople know about the Locker outside of NJ and it has built up a ­great reputation over the years. Dan (Rivas) and Ana (Dobrian) have r­ eally cleaned it up and have worked hard to make it what it is t­ oday. It would be terrible to lose this place—­for locals, touring bands, and the ­music and art community as a ­whole.”26 Another captured the spirit of the experience of the Meatlocker as “the base for a community where you can be yourself, lean on ­others for support, enjoy the best of times, and see r­ eally talented artists. It has been my haven for years now, and I am so thankful for that, but I’m also not okay with

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it ending. I know all good ­things must come to an end, but not this, at least not yet.”27 Eventually, the responsible adults stepped in to do what they had to do to negotiate with all the neighbors, the landlord (who has been extremely supportive over the years), and local authorities. The Yelp reviews w ­ ere removed, and the club reopened and outlasted the restaurant. A dedicated group of organizers keep the place g­ oing, and new generations of teen­agers continue discovering that unmatchable feeling of excitement mixed with terror that comes from descending the stairs into a space where anything can happen, and raucous, raw, and live ­music w ­ ill be made. For the past several years a roving team of volunteers have paid the bills, booked the bands, dealt with sometimes unhappy neighbors and landlord. They stage benefit shows, including Mosh 4 Paws (­after a fire at the local animal shelter), Lex Alex Nihilum’s annual Sludge for Suicide Awareness, and Ana Dobrian’s annual Toys for Tots event. Peter, who still makes ­music, runs the sound board and books bands at vari­ous venues, and rec­ords other bands in a rickety studio above the garage of the ­house he rents on Orange Road. He remembers how formative the experience of the scene was in his life when his band Animal Blood played to racially diverse packed crowds with hip-­hop bands from the small label associated with the local skate shop Division East: It’s a ­giant part of who I am. It gave me purpose post ­going to war. It showed me the real meaning of giving. It’s taught me how to just get it done. Murphy’s Law is a bitch (not the band) and sometimes you have to just make what­ever is in your way happen. You a­ ren’t g­ oing to get paid for it. No one’s g­ oing to tell you good job, but at the end of the night you had a cool show and you w ­ ere in the com­pany of ­people that get you, even if you ­don’t know them and what’s better than that?28

The ­music business seems to be in continual crisis. Artists cannot make a living. Technology has replaced musicians. Streaming ser­vices pay an appallingly low amount to artists. Someone is making money, but it is not the musicians. But none of that r­ eally m ­ atters if you love m ­ usic. Musicians and ­music lovers ­will continue making the scene in the Garden State b­ ecause “all you ­really need is a bunch of kids that give a shit about where they are and what they are listening to.”29

ACKNOWL­E DGMENTS

This work would not exist without the initiative of Claudia Ocello, who came to me with the idea for the proj­ect some time ago. Although the original plan did not pan out, I am grateful for her support. I never undertake any research without immediately consulting the inimitable Richard Kearney, the reference and electronic resource librarian at William Paterson University (WPU). His help has been invaluable, and it does not hurt that he knows as much about rock m ­ usic and New Jersey as anyone. The ­whole staff at the Cheng Library at WPU has been indispensable, particularly the folks at Interlibrary Loan and the now-­departed Victoria Heenan Wagner. I have received cheerful research assistance from Stephen Pellegrini, Bryan Payor, and Joel Cotton-­Betteridge. I could not have completed this proj­ect without a grant from the NJ350 Publication Initiative of the New Jersey Historical Commission. My thanks to its director, Sara R. Cureton, and to Skylar Harris for guiding me through the pro­cess. I was able to develop some of t­ hese ideas through pre­sen­ta­tions at the Morris Museum and the Mid-­Atlantic Popu­lar & American Culture Association. At William Paterson University, Dean Kara Rabbitt and the Provost’s office have supported me with research assistance. Meg Guenthner patiently assisted my passage through the funding labyrinth. I am deeply grateful to Malissa Williams for all her selfless support through the years. At Rutgers University Press, I began this pro­cess u­ nder the able counsel of its director, Marlie P. Wasserman. Upon her retirement, I could not have been more fortunate than to have found Peter Mickulas, the executive editor. He edits with a light touch, but a firm understanding and clear vision. In the few times we have (mildly) disagreed, the work was strengthened by our discussion. At ­every step, working with Peter has been a joy and an inspiration. A few of the chapters have exceptional photos. For t­ hese, I am grateful for help from Leonard DeGraaf, the archivist at Thomas Edison National Historical Park, and Valerie Sheffner, the museum technician; Angela Schad, a reference archivist and digital archives specialist at Hagley Museum and 139

140

Acknowl­edgments

Library; Mark Berresford at Mark Berresford Rare Rec­ords; Jim Testa at Jersey Beat for his generosity; and Michael Cuscuna, the director of Mosaic Rec­ ords, who went to extraordinary lengths to help me with the stunning photos by Francis Wolff. Perhaps more than most books, this one depends on the work of scholars and fans who have gone before me. I am especially indebted to the work of Allan Sutton and the extraordinary Mainspring Press; the interviews about Edison by John Harvith and Susan Edwards Harvith; Barry Mazor for his work on Ralph Peer and Jimmie Rod­gers; Marc Myers of JazzWax for his numerous interviews with Rudy Van Gelder; Richard Scrivani for his magisterial memoir of Zacherley; Garry Wien for his history of ­music in Asbury Park; and especially Carrie Potter-­Devening for her ­labor of love to her grandparents, the found­ers of the Upstage Club, a book filled with ­hundreds of photos and stories, which was truly indispensable in writing chapter 5. I am ever grateful to t­hose who trained me to be a historian, especially Berta Bilezikjian, D.  Carroll Joynes, Carol Berkin, Stewart Ewen, and David Nasaw. Special thanks to Master Patricia Papera, Roger Sedarat, David Petroski, Kevin Delaney, Thee Volatiles, and all my friends in the Montclair ­music scene. I dedicate this book to Sinéad and Rory, my ­children, ­because they are my two favorite ­people. I d­ on’t think I need any other reason than that. Dewar ­MacLeod January 2019

NOTES

Introduction 1. ​Richard A. Peterson and Andy Bennett, “Introducing ­Music Scenes,” in Andy Ben-

nett and A. Richard Peterson, M ­ usic Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), 1. 2. ​Peterson and Bennett, “Introducing ­Music Scenes,” 3. 3. ​John Blacking quoted in Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popu­lar M ­ usic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 251. 4. ​For excellent reviews of the lit­er­a­ture on subculture, post-­subculture, and scenes, see Andy Bennett, “Consolidating the ­Music Scenes Perspective,” Poetics 32, nos. 3–4 (2004): 223–234, and Andy Bennett, “The Post-­subcultural Turn: Some Reflections 10 Years On,” Journal of Youth Studies 14, no. 5 (August 2011): 493–506. For a useful survey of subcultural theory and post-­subculture work (and a spirited defense of the Birmingham School [CCCS]), see Shane Blackman, “Youth Subcultural Theory: A Critical Engagement with the Concept, Its Origins and Politics, from the Chicago School to Postmodernism,” Journal of Youth Studies 8, no. 1 (March 2005): 1–20. 5. ​Andy Bennett, “Subcultures or Neo-­Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship between Youth, Style and Musical Taste,” Sociology 33, no. 3 (August 1999): 599–617. 6. ​Rupert Weinzierl and David Muggleton, “What Is ‘Post-­subcultural Studies’?” in The Post-­Subcultures Reader, edited by David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl, 3–4 (Oxford: Berg, 2003). 7. ​For an in­ter­est­ing perspective, see Dylan Clark on punk as “the last subculture,” in “The Death and Life of Punk, The Last Subculture,” in Post-­Subcultures Reader, edited by Muggleton and Weinzierl, 223–238. See also Holly Kruse, “Subcultural Identity in Alter­ usic 12, no. 1 (1993): 33. Building on Sara Cohen’s work native ­Music Culture,” Popu­lar M on Liverpool musicians and Ruth Finnegan’s study of Milton Keynes’s musicians, Kruse links the local with the translocal, the national and international communities of ­music makers and listeners. 8. ​Benjamin Woo, Jamie Rennie, and Stuart R. Poyntz, “Scene Thinking,” Cultural Studies 29, no. 3 (May 2015): 287, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2014.937950. 9. ​Referencing Andy Bennett and Pepper Glass; Woo, Rennie, and Poyntz, “Scene Thinking,” 287. 10. ​Woo, Rennie, and Poyntz, “Scene Thinking,” 288. See Barry Shank, Dissonant Identities: The Rock’n’Roll Scene in Austin, Texas (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994) and ­Will Straw, “Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popu­lar M ­ usic,” Cultural Studies 5 no. 3 (1991), 368–388, DOI: 10.1080/09502389100490311. 11. ​See Peterson and Bennett, “Introducing ­Music Scenes,” 7. 141

142

Notes to Pages 3–5

12. ​Woo, Rennie, and Poyntz, “Scene Thinking,” 288. 13. ​Citing Hesmondalgh’s objections; Woo, Rennie, and Poyntz, “Scene Thinking,” 291. 14. ​­Will Straw, “Some Th ­ ings a Scene Might Be,” Cultural Studies 29, no. 3 (May 2015):

477, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2014.937947. 15. ​The very flexibility of the concept of scene has provoked some criticism, leading one

scholar to won­der if scene might be “a fruitfully muddled concept?” David Hesmondhalgh rejects subculture, scene, and Bennett’s theorization of “neo-­tribalism” as all too dependent on the examination of the relationship between young ­people and ­music. David Hesmondhalgh, “Subcultures, Scenes or Tribes? None of the Above,” Journal of Youth Studies 8, no. 1 (March 2005): 27. ­Will Straw articulates the potentially too expansive and loose quality of the category of scene in “Scenes and Sensibilities,” Public 22/23 (2001): 248. Summarizing Barry Shank’s pioneering perspective in Dissonant Identities, Straw writes of the complexity and dense, sometimes impenetrable, meanings in “Cultural Scenes,” Loisir et société [Society and Leisure] 27, no. 2 (2004): 412. 16. ​Thomas Turino, ­Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1. 17. ​Turino, ­Music as Social Life, 12. 18. ​Turino, ­Music as Social Life, 12. 19. ​“The fact that m ­ usic ­matters so much to so many p­ eople may derive from two contrasting yet complementary dimensions of musical experience in modern socie­ties. The first is that m ­ usic often feels intensely and emotionally linked to the private self. As one writer has put it, ­music is a set of cultural practices that have come to be intricately bound up with the realm of the personal and the subjective. This includes the way in which ­music provides a basis for intimate relations with o­ thers: a parent singing a child to sleep; three ­sisters expressing their feelings for a fourth by singing to her on her birthday; two lovers in bed hearing a song that they ­will forever associate with each other. The second is that ­music is often the basis of collective, public experiences, w ­ hether in live per­for­mance, mad dancing at a party, or simply by virtue of the fact that thousands and sometimes millions of ­people can come to know the same sounds and performers.” David Hesmondhalgh, Why M ­ usic M ­ atters (Chichester, West Sussex, ­England: John Wiley, 2013), 1–2. 20. ​Simon Frith, “­Towards an Aesthetic of Popu­lar ­Music,” in Taking Popu­lar M ­ usic Seriously: Selected Essays (New York: Routledge, 2007), 261. 21. ​Frith, “­Towards an Aesthetic of Popu­lar ­Music,” 265–66. 22. ​Frith, “­Towards an Aesthetic of Popu­lar ­Music,” 266. 23. ​Frith, “­Towards an Aesthetic of Popu­lar ­Music,” 267. 24. ​Mark Mattern, Acting in Concert: M ­ usic, Community, and Po­liti­cal Action (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 4–5. 25. ​Samuel K. Byrd, The Sounds of Latinidad: Immigrants Making M ­ usic and Creating Culture in a Southern City (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 6. 26. ​Byrd, Sounds of Latinidad, 60–62. 27. ​Byrd, Sounds of Latinidad, 59. 28. ​Paul Hodkinson, “Translocal Connections in the Goth Scene,” in Bennett and Peterson, ­Music Scenes, 144.



Notes to Pages 5–8

143

29. ​Hodkinson, “Translocal Connections in the Goth Scene,” 146. 30. ​Howard S. Becker, “Jazz Places,” in Bennett and Peterson, ­Music Scenes, 26. 31. ​Jeffrey S. Debies-­Carl, Punk Rock and the Politics of Place: Building a Better Tomorrow (New York: Routledge, 2014), 7. 32. ​Travis A. Jackson, Blowin’ the Blues Away: Per­for­mance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 67. 33. ​Charles Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 24, 29, 37, 39. 34. ​Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 40. 35. ​Quoting Homi Bhabha; Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 41. 36. ​Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 47, 40. See also Andrew S. Berish, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 37. ​Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), 9. 38. ​Thomas H. Greenland, Jazzing: New York City’s Unseen Scene (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 5–6. 39. ​Greenland, Jazzing, 7. 40. ​George Lewis quoted in Daniel Fischlein and Ajay Heble, eds., The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 3. 41. ​Fischlein and Heble, Other Side of Nowhere, 7. 42. ​Amy Absher, The Black Musician and the White City: Race and M ­ usic in Chicago, 1900– 1967 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 7. See also the brilliant work by David Gilbert, The Product of Our Souls: Ragtime, Race, and the Birth of the Manhattan Musical Marketplace (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 43. ​See Jason Toynbee, “­Music, Culture, and Creativity,” in The Cultural Study of M ­ usic: A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, 102–103. (New York: Routledge, 2003). 44. ​Howard Becker quoted in Toynbee, “­Music, Culture, and Creativity,” 104. Toynbee also discusses Mikhail Bahktin’s dialogism and Pierre Bourdieu’s fields of cultural production. 45. ​Robert R. Faulkner, Hollywood Studio Musicians: Their Work and C ­ areers in the Recording Industry (Lanham, MD: University Press of Amer­ic­ a, 1985; orig. 1971), 7–8. 46. ​Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, “Introduction: Why Study Fans?” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2. (New York: New York University Press, 2007). See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). See also Dewar ­MacLeod, Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). 47. ​Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington, “Introduction,” 6–9. 48. ​Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington, “Introduction,” 10. 49. ​Laura Vrooman, “Kate Bush: Teen Pop and Older Female Fans,” in Bennett and Peterson, ­Music Scenes, 250.

144

Notes to Pages 8–15

50. ​Vrooman, “Kate Bush,” 250–251. 51. ​Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popu­lar ­Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 40–41, 20. 52. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 203–204. 53. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 205. 54. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 215. 55. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 252. 56. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 260. Frith describes ­music’s “unique emotional intensity— we absorb songs into our own lives and rhythm into our own bodies,” 272. 57. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 216, 272. 58. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 259. 59. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 272. 60. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 272, 275. 61. ​Frith, Performing Rites, 275. 62. ​Magdalena Waligórska-­Huhle, “Introduction,” in ­Music, Longing and Belonging: Articulations of the Self and the Other in the Musical Realm, edited by Magdalena Waligórska-­ Huhle, 1. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013). 63. ​Barry Shank, The Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 1. 64. ​Shank, Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty, 2. 65. ​Shank, Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty, 2–3. 66. ​Shank, Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty, 3. 67. ​Shank, Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty, 244. 68. ​Shank, Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty, 9. 69. ​Shank, Po­liti­cal Force of Musical Beauty, 245.

1. Thomas Edison and the First Recording Studio 1. ​Edison quoted in W.K.L. Dickson and Antonia Dickson, The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison (London: Chatto and Windus, 1894), http://­babel​.­hathitrust​.o­ rg​/­cgi​ /­pt​?­id​=­chi​.­57121461;view​=­1up;seq​=­11. 2. ​Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 23. 3. ​Quoted in Russell Sanjek, American Popu­lar ­Music and Its Business, Volume II: From 1790 to 1909 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 363. 4. ​Quoted in Andre Millard, Amer­i­ca on Rec­ord: A History of Recorded Sound (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 27. 5. ​Quoted in Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, Edison: His Life and Inventions (orig. New York: Harper & B ­ rothers Publishers, 1910), https://­archive​.­org​ /­details​/­edisonhislifeinv00dyer. 6. ​Alexander Rehding, “Wax Cylinder Revolutions,” Musical Quarterly 88, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 123. 7. ​David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American M ­ usic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5.



Notes to Pages 15–17

145

8. ​George H. Bliss, “Thomas A. Edison. A Tribune Correspondent Visits Him at Menlo Park: Some of His Recent Extraordinary Discoveries and Inventions,” Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1878, http://­www​.­phonozoic​.­net​/­n0060​.­htm. 9. ​“Etched”: Emile Berliner, The Gramophone: Etching the ­Human Voice (Washington, DC: Judd and Detweiler, 1889). “Imprisoned”: The musicologist Henry  E. Krehbiel in  1891, quoted in Rehding, “Wax Cylinder Revolutions,” 136, and Courtney Bryson quoted in Marsha Siefert, “Aesthetics, Technology, and the Capitalization of Culture: How the Talking Machine Became a Musical Instrument,” Science in Context 8, no. 2 (1995): 419, DOI: 10.1017/S0269889700002088. “Preserved or bottled up . . .”: George B. Prescott, “The Telephone and the Phonograph,” Scribner’s Monthly 15, no. 6 (April 1878): 848. Emile Berliner, The Gramophone: Etching the H ­ uman Voice (Washington, DC: Judd and Detweiler, 1889). 10. ​Randall Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison In­ven­ted the Modern World (New York: Crown, 2007), 34. 11. ​“Bottled M ­ usic,” Phonogram 1, no. 1 ( January 1891): 12. 12. ​Quoted in David Laing, “A Voice without a Face: Popu­lar ­Music and the Phonograph in the 1890s,” Popu­lar ­Music 10, no. 1 (1991): 3–4. 13. ​ Thomas Edison, “The Phonograph and Its F ­ uture,” North American Review ( July 1878): 530. 14. ​“The Man Who Invents: Tom Edison’s Talk with a ‘Post’ Reporter,” Washington Post and Union, April 19, 1878. 15. ​“Man Who Invents.” 16. ​Alex Ross emphasizes Edison’s claim to “annihilate time and space” that brought about a “global homogenization of taste.” Alex Ross, Listen to This (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 57. 17. ​Quoted in Laing, “Voice without a Face,” 3. 18. ​George Parsons Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 80, no. 477 (February 1890): 430. 19. ​“Man Who Invents.” 20. ​See M. A. Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” Harpers Monthly, no. 165 (September 1932): 409. 21. ​Sanjek, American Popu­lar ­Music, 364; “A Visit to the Inventor of the Phonograph,” Scientific American Supplement (April 20, 1878): 1904–1905, http://­www​.­phonozoic​.­net​ /­n0014​.­htm; also published as New York World story reprinted in Indiana State Sentinel. 22. ​Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” 417. 23. ​“A Momentous Musical Meeting,” Etude (October 1923): 663. 24. ​Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” 425. 25. ​Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” 429, 435. 26. ​See David E. Nye, The In­ven­ted Self: An Anti-­biography, from Documents of Thomas A. Edison (Odense: Odense University Press, 1983), 102. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted ­Women: A Study of Middle-­class Culture in Amer­i­ca, 1830–1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).

146

Notes to Pages 17–20

27. ​ Times (New Bloomfield, PA), April 30, 1878, Image 4, http://­chroniclingamerica​.­loc​ .­gov​/­lccn​/­sn90069164​/­1878​-­04​-­30​/­ed​-­1​/­seq​-4­ ​/­. 28. ​Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” 404–406. 29. ​William H. Bishop, “A Night with Edison,” Scribner’s Monthly 17, no. 1 (November 1878): 98. Also: “He sits down at the phonograph, fixes a double mouth-­piece to it and summons one of his assistants, while another places himself at an organ in the corner. They sing in two parts ‘John Brown’s Body.’ As the sonorous ­music rises and fills the long apartment, one gazes musingly yet with a secret thrill. It is like assisting at some strange, new rite,—­a martial chant of rejoicing in the greatness of a new era full of sublime promise and the dissipation of mysteries,” 97. 30. ​“Edison in His Workshop,” Harper’s Weekly 23 (August 2, 1879): 607. 31. ​Bishop, “A Night with Edison,” 88. 32. ​“Visit to the Inventor of the Phonograph.” 33. ​Bliss, “Thomas A. Edison.” See also Francis Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences (Dearborn, MI: Edison Institute, 1936). 34. ​PDF available at http://­www​.­edisontinfoil​.­com​/­ephemer1​.­htm. Walter L. Welch, Leah Brodbeck Stenzel Burt, and Oliver Read, From Tinfoil to Stereo: The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry, 1877–1929 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 17. 35. ​Quoted in Sanjek, American Popu­lar ­Music, 365. 36. ​Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 30. 37. ​Sir W. H. Preece, quoted in Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 31. 38. ​See Millard, Amer­i­ca on Rec­ord, 32–34. 39. ​Welch, Burt, and Read, From Tinfoil to Stereo, 72. Raymond Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” ARSC Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 20. 40. ​Sanjek, American Popu­lar ­Music, 367; Welch, Burt, and Read, From Tinfoil to Stereo, 87. 41. ​Welch, Burt, and Read, From Tinfoil to Stereo, 90. 42. ​Timothy Day, A C ­ entury of Recorded ­Music: Listening to Musical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 1. Day says Hofmann was eleven and the year was 1887. His footnotes seem more solid—­since Gelatt has none! Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 38. Gelatt says that in 1888, Hofmann, as a twelve-­year-­old piano prodigy, “visited the ­Edison laboratories to inspect the phonograph and engrave some cylinders.” 43. ​“Facts, Rumours, and Remarks,” Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 30, no. 558 (August 1, 1889): 468–473, http://­www​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­3360518. According to Roland Gelatt, “­These ­were the first recordings to be made by any recognized artist. Not long ­after, the famous German musician Hans von Bülow came to examine the new apparatus. He recorded a Chopin mazurka, then put the tubes to ears and waited for the playback. What he heard caused him to faint dead away—­though w ­ hether he was laid low by his own playing or merely by the poor reproduction of it has never been divulged” (Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 39). Timothy Day says that Bülow “almost fainted,” in ­Century of Recorded ­Music, 1. 44. ​Thomas A. Edison, “How Sound Is Reproduced,” Phonogram 1, no. 1 ( January 1891): 14. 45. ​Millard, Amer­i­ca on Rec­ord, 44.



Notes to Pages 20–27

147

46. ​Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the

Edison Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 171. Schmidt Horning, Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 13. 48. ​Horning, Chasing Sound, 14. 49. ​One historian claims that “very ­little recognition has been given to Thomas Edison and his able staff, including his son Theodore M. Edison, for their pioneering work in long playing recording. Many experiments done at the Columbia St. Studios ­were far ahead of their time in producing commercial recordings.” Ronald Dethlefson, “Recordings of the Columbia St. Studios—­West Orange,” in Ronald Dethlefson, ed., Edison Disc Artists & Rec­ords, 1919–1929, 2nd ed. (Brooklyn: APM Press, 1990), 126. 50. ​Horning, Chasing Sound, 5. 51. ​Jerry Fabris, “WFMU-­Thomas Edison’s Attic: Play­list from April 19, 2005—­Acoustical Recording Stories,” http://­wfmu​.­org​/­playlists​/­shows​/­14803. 52. ​Quoted in Day, C ­ entury of Recorded ­Music, 10. 53. ​In John Harvith and Susan Edwards Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph: A ­Century in Retrospect (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 43. 54. ​In Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 80, 81. 55. ​Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” 403. See also Day, ­Century of Recorded M ­ usic, 10. 56. ​In Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 111. 57. ​In Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 65–66. 58. ​Day, ­Century of Recorded ­Music, 2. 59. ​Quoted in Horning, Chasing Sound, 14. 60. ​Fabris, “WFMU-­Thomas Edison’s Attic.” 61. ​Quoted in Horning, Chasing Sound, 14. 62. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 26–27. See also Bridget Paolucci, “Edison as Rec­ord Producer,” High Fidelity Magazine ( January 1977): 88. 63. ​Case quoted in Welch, Burt, and Read, From Tinfoil to Stereo, 146. 64. ​Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in Amer­i­ca, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 238. 65. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 30. 66. ​Fabris, “WFMU-­Thomas Edison’s Attic.” 67. ​See Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 26–27. See also Theodore M. Edison, “That horn, which was very large at one end and tapered down evenly to a normal receiving end, produced some in­ter­est­ing results, but I understand that for many purposes, an exponential horn could have achieved the same results in much smaller space.” In Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 40. 68. ​Dethlefson claims that Edison believed “that sound waves remained in an unfocused state for as much as 125’ beyond the source of a sound.” See Dethlefson, “Recordings of the Columbia St. Studios,” 126–127 for more on the 40-­and 125-­foot horns. 69. ​Victor Young, “Edison and ­Music,” Etude, the ­Music Magazine (December 1932): 453. 70. ​Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” 426. 47. ​Susan

148

Notes to Pages 28–35

71. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 26. 72. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 399. 73. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 453. 74. ​Edison quoted by Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phono-

graph, 26. 75. ​Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” 413. 76. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 29. 77. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 31. 78. ​“Momentous Musical Meeting,” 664. 79. ​Samuel Gardner in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 49. 80. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 399. 81. ​Gardner in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 48–49.

in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 49. Mark Katz has a brilliant analy­sis of the relationship between vibrato and the advent of recording. See “Aesthetics out of Exigency: Violin Vibrato and the Phonograph,” in Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed ­Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 94–108. 83. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 399. 84. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 399. 85. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 25–26. 86. ​Stevens in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph, 32. 87. ​Edison Memorandum, May 11, 1912, Edison General File, Edison National Historic Site Archives, West Orange, New Jersey. Quoted in Leonard DeGraaf, “Confronting the Mass Market: Thomas Edison and the Entertainment Phonograph,” Business and Economic History 24, no. 1 (Fall 1995): 93. 88. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 399. 89. ​Young, “Edison and ­Music,” 399. 90. ​John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical ­Music,” Appleton’s Magazine 8 (1906), 278–284, http://­www​.­phonozoic​.­net​/­n0155​.­htm. 91. ​“Momentous Musical Meeting,” 664. 92. ​DeGraaf, “Confronting the Mass Market,” 94–95. 93. ​DeGraaf, “Confronting the Mass Market,” 94–95. 94. ​Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1923), 72. 95. ​Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines, 163. 96. ​DeGraaf, “Confronting the Mass Market,” 95. 97. ​Letter circa 1916, quoted in Kathleen Mcauliffe, “The Undiscovered World of Thomas Edison,” Atlantic, December 1, 1995, http://­www​.t­ heatlantic​.­com​/­magazine​/­archive​/­1995​ /­12​/­the​-­undiscovered​-­world​-­of​-­thomas​-e­ dison​/­305880​/­​?­single​_­page​=­true. 98. ​“Momentous Musical Meeting,” 663. 99. ​Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” 415, 413. 100. ​“Momentous Musical Meeting,” 664. 82. ​Gardner



Notes to Pages 37–39

149

2. The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany and the Scene at Home 1. ​F. W. Gaisberg, The ­Music Goes Round (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 3–7. 2. ​See David Laing, “A Voice without a Face: Popu­lar ­Music and the Phonograph in the 1890s,” Popu­lar ­Music 10, no. 1 (1991): 2. 3. ​Gaisberg, ­Music Goes Round, 6–7. 4. ​The classic formulations of the 1890s as a transitional period in American Culture are John Higham, “The Re­orientation of American Culture in the 1890s” (orig. 1965), in Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture, edited by John Higham and Carl Guarneri, 173–98 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), and Warren I. Susman, “ ‘Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth-­Century Culture,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth ­Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 271–86. A recent critique of Susman comes from Andrew R. Heinze, “Schizo­phre­ nia Americana: Aliens, Alienists and the ‘Personality Shift’ of Twentieth-­Century Culture,” American Quarterly 55, no. 2 ( June 2003): 227–256. See also Rob Schorman, “The Truth about Good Goods: Clothing, Advertising, and the Repre­sen­ta­tion of Cultural Values at the End of the Nineteenth ­Century,” American Studies 37 (Spring 1996): 23–49. 5. ​Laing, “Voice without a Face,” 6. 6. ​Laing, “Voice without a Face,” 6. 7. ​Gaisberg, ­Music Goes Round, 8. 8. ​Gaisberg, ­Music Goes Round, 9–10. 9. ​Gaisberg, ­Music Goes Round, 12. 10. ​Gaisberg, ­Music Goes Round, 15. 11. ​George Reeser Prowell, The History of Camden County, New Jersey (Philadelphia: L. J. Richards, 1886), 532, http://­www​.­ebooksread​.c­ om​/­authors​-e­ ng​/­george​-r­ eeser​-­prowell​ /­the​-­history​-o­ f​-c­ amden​-­county​-n­ ew​-­jersey​-­wor​.s­ html. For the carriage factory, see also http://­www​.c­ oachbuilt​.­com​/­bui​/­c​/­collings​/­collings​.­htm. The official Victor history is B. L. Aldridge, The Victor Talking Machine Com­pany, edited by Frederic Bayh (orig. Camden: RCA Sales Corporation,1964), http://­www​.­davidsarnoff​.o­ rg​/­vtm​.­html. For an in-­ depth account of Emile Berliner’s invention of the gramophone, see Raymond R. Wile, “Etching the ­Human Voice: The Berliner Invention of the Gramophone,” ARSC Journal 21, no. 1 (1990): 2–22. 12. ​Johnson quoted in Jerrold Northrop Moore, Sound Revolutions: A Biography of Fred Gaisberg, Founding ­Father of Commercial Sound Recording (London: Sanctuary, 1999), 27. 13. ​According to Aldridge, in Victor Talking Machine Com­pany, commercially, the Berliner pro­cess had five impor­tant advantages: 1.

A rec­ord groove which formed track to guide the sound box across the rec­ord. (No propelling mechanism was needed.) 2. Grooves with hard walls which provided support for the needle and resulted in louder reproduction and protection against wear. 3. Ease and economy in making a large number of duplicate rec­ords.

150 4. 5.

Notes to Pages 40–45 Better musical results from the lateral pro­cess of recording. Ease and economy in shipment and storage.

14. ​Quoted in Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 157. 15. ​David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American ­Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5–6. 16. ​Laing, “Voice without a Face,” 2. 17. ​Suisman, Selling Sounds, 9. 18. ​Suisman, Selling Sounds, 10, 12. 19. ​Wile, “Etching the H ­ uman Voice,” 2–22. 20. ​See Barry Ashpole, “A Conversation with John Bolig,” ARSC Journal, reprinted with permission from ARSC Journal (Spring 2003), http://­www​.­mainspringpress​.­com​/­caruso​ _­interview​.­html. 21. ​Ashpole, “Conversation with John Bolig.” 22. ​Quoted in Howard S. Greenfield, Caruso, An Illustrated Life (North Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar Square, 1991), 33. 23. ​Quoted in Greenfield, Caruso, 42. 24. ​Melba quoted in Greenfield, Caruso, 49. 25. ​Enrico Caruso Jr. and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My F ­ ather and My F ­ amily (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1990), 349. Alex Ross notes, “That ping in Caruso’s tone, that golden bark, made the man himself seem viscerally pre­sent.” Alex Ross, Listen to This (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 57. 26. ​Greenfield, Caruso, 47. ­There is some doubt as to the truth of this often-­told story. Moore contends that Gaisberg was able to ignore the cable forbidding him to sign Caruso ­because he had already de­cided to pay it out of his own pocket. Moore, Sound Revolutions, 69. 27. ​Gaisberg quoted in Greenfield, Caruso, 48. 28. ​Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 115. 29. ​Marsha Siefert, “The Audience at Home: The Early Recording Industry and the Marketing of Musical Taste,” in Audiencemaking: How the Media Create the Audience, edited by James S. Ettema and D. Charles Whitney, 195 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994). 30. ​Caruso and Farkas, Enrico Caruso, 346. 31. ​Quoted in Greenfield, Caruso, 132. 32. ​Edward L. Bernays, Biography of an Idea: The Founding Princi­ples of Public Relations (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015; orig. 1965), http://­books​.­google​.­com​ /­books​?­id​=­tFO2BgAAQBAJ&q​=­caruso#v​=­onepage&q&f​=­false. 33. ​See Greenfield, Caruso, 68, 71. 34. ​Bernays, Biography of an Idea. 35. ​Compton Mackenzie, Foreword to J. Freestone and H. J. Drummond, Enrico Caruso: His Recorded Legacy (Minneapolis: T. S. Denison, 1961), ix. 36. ​Caruso and Farkas, Enrico Caruso, 286–287.



Notes to Pages 45–50

151

37. ​Caruso and Farkas, Enrico Caruso, 363. 38. ​William R. Moran, “Discography of Original Recordings,” in Caruso and Farkas, Enrico Caruso, 603–604. 39. ​Compton Mackenzie, “Enrico Caruso,” Gramophone ( July 1924): 45. 40. ​Mackenzie, “Enrico Caruso,” 45. 41. ​On high/low, see the classic by Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow / Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in Amer­ic­a (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 42. ​Siefert, “Audience at Home,” 187. 43. ​Siefert, “Audience at Home,” 195. 44. ​Barzun quoted in Michael Chanan, Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on ­Music (New York: Verso, 1995), 12. 45. ​ Talking Machine World 1, no. 10 (October 15, 1905), https://­archive​.­org​/­stream​/­The TalkingMachineWord1905Volume1​/­TheTalkingMachineWorld1905#page​/­n275​/­mode​ /­2up. 46. ​Eisenberg, quoted in David Laing, “Voice without a Face,” 8. 47. ​See Siefert, “Audience at Home,” 209. 48. ​Marie Sumner Lott, The Social Worlds of Nineteenth-­Century Chamber ­Music: Composers, Consumers, Communities (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 4. 49. ​Lott, Social Worlds, 18. 50. ​Lott, Social Worlds, 20. 51. ​Daniel Cavicchi, “Loving ­Music: Listeners, Entertainments, and the Origins of M ­ usic Fandom in Nineteenth-­Century Amer­i­ca,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 236 (New York: New York University Press, 2007). 52. ​Cavicchi, “Loving ­Music,” 239. 53. ​Cavicchi, “Loving ­Music,” 246. 54. ​Pamela Robertson Wojcik, “The Girl and the Phonograph; or, The Vamp and the Machine Revisited,” in Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popu­lar ­Music, edited by Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson Wojcik (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). Pamela Robertson Wojcik notes how ­women and girls are depicted in advertising and popu­lar culture, especially film, as gaining access to auditory power through the phonograph, and using the technology for “private, even solo, plea­sure.” 452. See also Nathan David Bowers, “Creating a Home Culture for the Phonograph: W ­ omen and the Rise of Sound Recordings in the United States, 1877–1913,” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2007 (UMI Number: 3270123)). 55. ​Wojcik, “Girl and the Phonograph,” 435. See also Holly Kruse, “Early Audio Technology and Domestic Space,” Stanford Humanities Review 3, no. 2 (1993): 1–14. 56. ​Kruse, “Early Audio Technology,” 1. 57. ​Kruse, “Early Audio Technology,” 8. 58. ​See also Susan C. Cook, “Talking Machines, Dancing Bodies: Marketing Recorded Dance ­Music before World War I,” in Bodies of Sound: Studies across Popu­lar ­Music and Dance, edited by Sherril Dodds and Susan C. Cook, 153 (New York: Routledge, 2016).

152

Notes to Pages 50–59

59. ​The ratio of popu­lar to Red Seal was close to five-­to-­one in the teens and twenties.

See “Victor Rec­ord Sales Statistics (1901–1941),” http://­www​.­mainspringpress​.­com​ /­victorsales​.­html. 60. ​See Tim Brooks, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Tim Brooks, “ ‘Might Take One Disc of This Trash as a Novelty’: Early Recordings by the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Popularization of ­ usic 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 283; Paul Robeson Jr., The ‘Negro Folk ­Music,’ ” American M Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artists Journey, 1898–1939 (New York: John Wiley, 2001), 93. 61. ​See Nathaniel Shilkret, Sixty Years in the ­Music Business (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005). 62. ​Allan Sutton, “Camden, Philadelphia, or New York? The Victor Studio Conundrum (1900–20),” http://­www​.­mainspringpress​.­com​/­vic​-­studios​.­html. 63. ​From A New Graded List of Victor Rec­ords for the Home, Kindergarten and School, Education Department, Victor Talking Machine Com­pany, 1918. Available as “Victor Discography: How Recordings Are Made in the Victor Laboratory,” http://­victor​.­library​.­ucsb​ .­edu​/­index​.­php​/­resources​/­detail​/­54. 64. ​The daily whistles ­were fi­nally halted in 1923. See Allan Sutton, “A Camden Chronology: The Evolution of the Victor Talking Machine Com­pany Complex (1899–1929),” ­ ainspringpress​.­com​/­vic​-c­ amden​.­html. http://­www​.m 65. ​“Victor Co. Announces Plans for Radiola Installation in Victor Talking Machines,” Talking Machine World, New York, June 15, 1925, http://­www​.­sfmuseum​.­org​/­hist2​/­radiola​ .­html. See also Aldridge, Victor Talking Machine Com­pany. 66. ​Barry Mazor, Ralph Peer and the Making of Popu­lar Roots M ­ usic (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015), 11–21. 67. ​For Peer’s role in the production and distribution of the rec­ord, see Mazor, Ralph Peer, 37–43. 68. ​Mazor, Ralph Peer, 76–77. 69. ​Ralph Peer, 1955 letter to folklorist John Greenway, quoted in Mazor, Ralph Peer, 1. For multiple fascinating perspectives on Jimmie Rod­gers, see Mary Davis and Warren Zanes, eds., Waiting for a Train: Jimmie Rod­gers’s Amer­i­ca (Burlington, MA: Rounder Books, 2009). 70. ​Jessica H. Foy, “The Home Set to M ­ usic,” in The Arts and the American Home, 1890– 1930, edited by Jessica H. Foy and Karal Ann Marling, 62–84 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994).

3. Jazz at the Cliffside 1. ​Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 29. 2. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 30. 3. ​See Jason Toynbee, “­Music, Culture, and Creativity,” in The Cultural Study of ­Music: A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, 102–103 (New York: Routledge, 2003).



Notes to Pages 59–62

153

4. ​Howard Becker, quoted in Toynbee, “­Music, Culture, and Creativity,” 104. Toynbee also discusses Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism and Pierre Bourdieu’s fields of cultural production. 5. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 204. 6. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 30, 171. 7. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 217. 8. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 212. 9. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 203. 10. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 210. 11. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 214. 12. ​DeVeaux, Birth of Bebop, 220. 13. ​“RIP Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016),” BlueNote​.­com, August 25, 2016, http://­www​ .­bluenote​.­com​/­news​/­rip​-­rudy​-­van​-­gelder. Vicki Hyman, “N.J. Jazz ­Giant Rudy Van Gelder, Who Recorded John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dead at 91,” NJ​.­com, August 25, 2016, http://­www​.­nj​.­com​/­entertainment​/­celebrities​/­index​.­ssf​/­2016​/­08​/­rudy​_­van​_­gelder​ _­jazz​_­recording​_­engineer​_­obituary​.­html. 14. ​Van Gelder quoted in Marc Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016),” JazzWax, August 26, 2016 (from article originally in Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2012), http://­ www​.­jazzwax​.­com​/­2016​/­08​/­rudy​-v­ an​-­gelder​-­1924​-­2016​.­html. 15. ​Marc Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 2),” JazzWax, February 14, 2012, http://­www​.­jazzwax​.­com​/­2012​/­02​/­interview​-r­ udy​-­van​-­gelder​-­part​-­2​.­html. 16. ​A key source is Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 17. ​Associated Press, “Rudy Van Gelder, Engineer b ­ ehind Sound of Modern Jazz, Dies Aged 91,” The Guardian, August 28, 2016, https://­www​.t­ heguardian​.­com​/­music​/­2016​/­aug​ /­28​/­rudy​-v­ an​-g­ elder​-b­ lue​-n­ ote​-r­ ecords​-­dead. 18. ​Van Gelder quoted in “Rudy Van Gelder, ­Great Jazz Recording Engineer—­Obituary,” Telegraph, September 2, 2016, http://­www​.­telegraph​.­co​.­uk​/­obituaries​/­2016​/­09​/­02​/­rudy​ -­van​-­gelder​-­great​-­jazz​-­recording​-­engineer—obituary​/­. 19. ​Rudy Van Gelder, NEA interviews, at “National Endowment for the Arts Statement on the Death of NEA Jazz Master Rudy Van Gelder,” August 26, 2016, https://­www​.­arts​ .­gov​/­news​/­2016​/­national​-­endowment​-­arts​-­statement​-­death​-­nea​-­jazz​-­master​-­rudy​-­van​ -­gelder​.­ See also Kyle Kelly-­Yahner, “Miles Davis, Rudy Van Gelder, and a Living Room Recording Studio (Part 2 of 2),” National Museum of American History Blog, September 15, 2011, http://­americanhistory​.­si​.­edu​/­blog​/­2011​/­09​/­miles​-­davis​-­rudy​-­van​-­gelder​-­and​-­a​ -­living​-r­ oom​-r­ ecording​-­studio​-­part​-­2​-­of​-­2-​ ­​.­html. 20. ​Eric D. Daniel, C. Denis Mee, and Mark H. Clark, eds., Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years (New York: IEEE Press, 1999). Steven Schoenherr, “The History of Magnetic Recording,” November 5, 2002, http://­www​.­aes​.­org​/­aeshc​/­docs​/­recording​.t­ echnology​ .­history​/­magnetic4​.­html. 21. ​Sasha Zand, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder: Recording Coltrane, Miles, Monk, ­etc.,” Tape Op, no. 43 (September/October 2004), http://­tapeop​.­com​/­interviews​/­43​/­rudy​ -­van​-g­ elder​/­. 22. ​Marc Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 1),” JazzWax, February 13, 2012, http://­www​.j­ azzwax​.­com​/­2012​/­02​/­interview​-r­ udy​-­van​-­gelder​-­part​-­1​.­html.

154

Notes to Pages 62–68

23. ​Marc Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 4),” JazzWax, February 16, 2012, http://­www​.­jazzwax​.­com​/­2012​/­02​/­interview​-r­ udy​-­van​-­gelder​-­part​-­4.​ ­html. 24. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 1).” 25. ​Not white gloves, as was often claimed, but “plain brown cotton work gloves.” See Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 4).” 26. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 1).” 27. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 1).” 28. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3),” JazzWax, February 15, 2012, http://­ www​.j­ azzwax​.c­ om​/­2012​/­02​/­interview​-­rudy​-­van​-­gelder​-­part​-­3​.­html. 29. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3).” 30. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3).” 31. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3).” 32. ​Dan Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack: Defining the Jazz Sound in the 1950s,” Current Musicology, nos. 71–73 (Spring 2001–2002): 64. 33. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3).” 34. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3).” 35. ​Ira Gitler, “Vangelder’s Studio,” JazzTimes, April 2001, http://­jazztimes​.­com​/­articles​ /­20326​-­vangelder​-s­ ​-­studio. 36. ​Van Gelder quoted in Daniel Kreps, “Rudy Van Gelder, Renowned ‘A Love Supreme’ Engineer, Dead at 91,” Rolling Stone, August 26, 2016, http://­www​.­rollingstone​.­com​/­music​ /­news​/­rudy​-v­ an​-­gelder​-­a​-­love​-­supreme​-­engineer​-­dead​-­at​-­92​-­w436307. 37. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 3).” 38. ​Van Gelder quoted in Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 39. ​Gitler, “Vangelder’s Studio.” 40. ​Associated Press, “Rudy Van Gelder.” 41. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 68. 42. ​Van Gelder quoted in Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 43. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 44. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 45. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 46. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 47. ​Richard Brody, “Postscript: Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016), Modern Jazz’s Listener of Genius,” New Yorker, August 26, 2016, http://­www​.­newyorker​.­com​/­culture​/­richard​ -­brody​/­postscript​-­rudy​-v­ an​-­gelder​-­1924​-­2016​-m ­ odern​-­jazzs​-­listener​-o­ f​-­genius. 48. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 4).” 49. ​Nate Chinen, “How Rudy Van Gelder S ­ haped the Sound of Jazz as We Know It,” New York Times, August 26, 2016, http://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2016​/­08​/­27​/­arts​/­music​/­rudy​ -­van​-g­ elder​-­essential​-­recordings​.­html​?­​_­r​=­0. 50. ​Brody, “Postscript.” 51. ​Brody, “Postscript.” 52. ​Billy Taylor quoted in Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 59–60. 53. ​Marc Myers, “ARENA—­Music—­Anatomy of a Song: Deacon Blues: ‘They Call Alabama The Crimson Tide,’ ” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2015: D.1.



Notes to Pages 68–74

155

54. ​Van Gelder quoted in Kreps, “Rudy Van Gelder.” 55. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 60. 56. ​Michael Cuscuna, interview by Dean Schaffer, “Secrets of the Blue Note Vault,” Collectors Weekly, August 20, 2010, http://­www​.c­ ollectorsweekly​.­com​/­articles​/­secrets​-­of​-­the​ -­blue​-n­ ote​-v­ ault​-m ­ ichael​-c­ uscuna​-­on​-­monk​-­blakey​-­and​-­the​-­one​-­that​-­got​-­away​/­. 57. ​Jim Cogan and William Clark, T ­ emples of Sound: Inside the ­Great Recording Studios (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003), 194. 58. ​Alfred Lion quoted in Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 69. 59. ​Alfred Lion quoted in Ted Fox, In the Groove: The ­People B ­ ehind the ­Music (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 111. 60. ​Rudy van Gelder quoted in Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 69. 61. ​Rudy Van Gelder quoted in Cogan and Clark, ­Temples of Sound, 196. 62. ​Alfred Lion quoted in Cogan and Clark, ­Temples of Sound, 199. 63. ​Rudy Van Gelder, interview in Ben Sidran, Talking Jazz: An Oral History, exp. ed. (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), 314. 64. ​Bob Weinstock quoted in Cogan and Clark, ­Temples of Sound, 198. 65. ​Martin Gayford, “Blue Note Rec­ords: From Ammons to Monk, It Was Home to the Jazz Idealists,” Telegraph, July  15, 2009, https://­www​.­telegraph​.­co​.­uk​/­culture​/­music​ /­worldfolkandjazz​/­5777401​ /­Blue​-­Note​-­R ecords​-­f rom​-­A mmons​-­to​ -­Monk​-­it​ -­was​ -­home​-­to​-­the​-­jazz​-­idealists​.­html. 66. ​“James Rozzi Interview with Rudy Van Gelder,” Audio Magazine, November 1995, reprinted in Steven Cerra, “Rudy van Gelder: A Signature Sound,” Jazz Profiles, May 8, 2011, https://­jazzprofiles​.b­ logspot​.c­ om​/­2011​/­05​/­rudy​-­van​-­gelder​-­signature​-­sound​.­html. 67. ​“James Rozzi Interview with Rudy Van Gelder.” 68. ​Chinen, “How Rudy Van Gelder ­Shaped the Sound.” 69. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 72. 70. ​Van Gelder quoted in Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 72. 71. ​Johnny Griffin quoted in Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz, rev. and updated ed. (New York: Continuum, 2007), 492–493. 72. ​Ashley Kahn, A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature ­Album (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 90. 73. ​Van Gelder, NEA interviews. 74. ​Cary Thomas, Bebop: The ­Music and Its Players (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 117. 75. ​Michael Cuscana quoted in Thomas Staudter, “Trane Tracks,” Downbeat (September 2014): 32. 76. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 62. 77. ​George Hicks, “Rudy Van Gelder Heard the Sound of the F ­ uture in the M ­ usic of His Time,” ARTery, September 1, 2016, http://­www​.­wbur​.­org​/­artery​/­2016​/­09​/­01​/­rudy​-­van​ -­gelder. 78. ​Burt Korall, Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz, The Swing Years (Cary, NC: Oxford University Press, 2004), 84–85. ProQuest ebrary. 79. ​Thomas, Bebop, 182.

156

Notes to Pages 74–79

80. ​Robin D. G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (New York: ­Free Press, 2009), 183. 81. ​Ira Gitler, liner notes to Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz G ­ iants, Prestige LP 7150. 82. ​André Hodier quoted in Peter Losin, “Miles Ahead Session Details,” Miles Ahead: A Miles Davis Website, http://­www​.­plosin​.c­ om​/­MilesAhead​/­Sessions​.­aspx​?­s​=­541224. 83. ​Losin, “Miles Ahead Session Details.” 84. ​Zand, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder.” 85. ​Zand, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder.” 86. ​Davis quoted in Tom Reney, “Miles Davis All Stars: At Work On Christmas Eve,” New ­England Pubic Radio, December 24, 2014, http://­digital​.­nepr​.­net​/­music​/­2014​/­12​ /­24​/­miles​-­davis​-­all​-­stars​/­. 87. ​Rudy Van Gelder quoted in Cogan and Clark, ­Temples of Sound, 199. 88. ​Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, Miles, the Autobiography. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 80. 89. ​Davis quoted in Reney, “Miles Davis All Stars.” 90. ​Thelonious Monk quoted in Kelley, Thelonious Monk, 182. 91. ​Bob Weinstock quoted in The Prestige Rec­ords Story [sound recording]. Berkeley: Prestige, 1999. 92. ​Zand, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder.” 93. ​Gitler, liner notes to Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz G ­ iants. 94. ​Monk quoted in Kelley, Thelonious Monk, 184. 95. ​Reney, “Miles Davis All Stars.” 96. ​Marc Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 5),” JazzWax, February 17, 2012, http://­www​.­jazzwax​.­com​/­2012​/­02​/­interview​-­rudy​-­van​-­gelder​-­part​-­5​.­html. 97. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 98. ​Van Gelder quoted in Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 99. ​Marc Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 5).” 100. ​Van Gelder, NEA interviews. 101. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 102. ​Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 103. ​Kahn, Love Supreme, 89. 104. ​Producer Phil Ramone, quoted in Kahn, Love Supreme, 91. 105. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 54. 106. ​Lewis MacAdams, Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-­Garde (New York: ­Free Press, 2001), 63. 107. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 54. 108. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 54. 109. ​Skea, “Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack,” 54. 110. ​Van Gelder quoted in Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).” 111. ​Zand, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder.” 112. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 5).” 113. ​Van Gelder quoted in Myers, “Rudy Van Gelder (1924–2016).”



Notes to Pages 79–84

157

114. ​Mingus quoted in Leonard Feather, “Blindfold Test: Charlie Mingus,” Downbeat Magazine, April 28, 1960; reprint, http://­mingusmingusmingus​.­com​/­mingus​/­blindfold​-­test. 115. ​Myers, “Interview: Rudy Van Gelder (Part 5).” 116. ​Van Gelder, NEA interviews.

4. Transylvania Bandstand and Rockin’ with the Cool Ghoul 1. ​“The Cool Ghoul”—­“an appellation bestowed upon him by Dick Clark following the release of ‘Dinner With Drac’ in 1958.” Richard Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” My Journey with Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul (New York: Dinoship, 2006), 66. 2. ​Ad reprinted in Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 51. 3. ​David Colton, Preface to Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 3. 4. ​Quoted in Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 50. 5. ​David Colton, Preface to Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 2. 6. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 587 (archive in the author’s possession.) 7. ​See Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 95. 8. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 80. 9. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 78. 10. ​“Community represents a theoretical and practical means through which disparate individuals come to recognize and act upon common concerns and interests, negotiate differences, and assert themselves in public arenas.” Mark Mattern, Acting in Concert: ­Music, Community, and Po­liti­cal Action (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 4–5. 11. ​For another example that theorizes issues of identity and community, see Samuel K. Byrd, The Sounds of Latinidad: Immigrants Making ­Music and Creating Culture in a Southern City (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 5, 59–62. 12. ​For another example from a dif­fer­ent era, see Paul Hodkinson, “Translocal Connections in the Goth Scene,” in ­Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual, edited by Andy Bennett and A. Richard Peterson, 144–146 (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004). 13. ​See Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, eds., Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth-­Century Amer­i­ca (New York: New York University Press, 1998) and Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine, eds., Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures (New York: Routledge, 1998). See also Doreen Massey, “The Spatial Construction of Youth Cultures,” in Skelton and Valentine, Cool Places, 123–126. 14. ​Ben Malbon, “Clubbing: Consumption, Identity and the Spatial Practices of Every-­ Night Life,” in Cool Places, edited by Skelton and Valentine, 280. 15. ​Colin Helb, “ ‘The Time Is Right to Set Our Sight on Salvation’: The Strange Tale of How the Hare Krishnas Came to Play Hardcore Punk,” in Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk: Aggressive Sounds in Con­temporary ­Music, edited by Eric James Abbey and Colin Helb, 162 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). See also Steven Blush’s oral history, American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2001).

158

Notes to Pages 84–88

16. ​Thomas Turino, ­Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 26, 35. 17. ​Nick Crossley, Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion: The Punk and Post-­Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975–1980 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 4, 9–10. 18. ​Crossley, Networks of Sound, 80, 35. 19. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 317. 20. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 265, 1273, and 1276. 21. ​Nancy Semon-­Krauss in “Remembering When,” Newark Star-­Ledger, November 1, 2007. 22. ​Diane W., Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 654. 23. ​See Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 705. 24. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 368. 25. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 261. 26. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 74. 27. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 1114. 28. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 265, 302, and 291. 29. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 300 and 302, 30. ​John T., Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 318. 31. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 532, 533, 534, 535, and 536. 32. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 265, 26, and 274. 33. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 38. 34. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 296. 35. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 626. 36. ​For other excellent studies of girl cultures, see Melanie Lowe, “ ‘Tween’ Scene: Re­sis­ tance within the Mainstream,” and Kristen Schilt, “ ‘Riot Grrrl Is . . .’: The Contestation over Meaning in a ­Music Scene,” in Bennett and Peterson, ­Music Scenes. 37. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 123. 38. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, numerous. 39. ​Richard X. Heyman, Boom Harangue (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2002). 40. ​Interview with Brian Lippey, December 23, 2010. See also Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 863, 1488, and 1538 for more club listings. 41​. ​ ­ http://­60sgaragebands​.­com​/­1910fruitgumcompany​.­html. 42. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 162. 43. ​Themes included Beach ( January 21, 196?), Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 106; Hillbilly, date unknown, Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 109; Vampire’s Ball, February 18, 1966, Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 109; Roman, March  1966, Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 115; Spy Show, taped Friday March 25, 1966, Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 117; and Dinosaur Egg Roll, April 8, 1966 (?), Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 130. 44. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 90. Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 284 and 299.



Notes to Pages 89–92

159

45. ​Show appears to have been June 15, 1967 (see Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group,

no. 679), though some remember July 1967. It appears that “Light My Fire” hit no. 1 on July 29, 1967, and stayed ­there for three weeks; see http://­www​.­billboard​.­com​/s­ pecials​ /­hot100​/­charts​/­weekly​-­no1s​-­60s​.­shtml; and http://­en​.­w ikipedia​.­org​/­w iki​/­List​_­of​ _­Billboard​_­Hot​_­100​_­number​-­one​_­singles​_­of​_­1967. Landers remembers the show as “their first appearance on tele­vi­sion” though this is doubtful (Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no.  1293). Landers and members of the Gilgos 5 (who claim to have appeared, and remember it as Beach Bum Party day) remember the Doors lip-­synching (Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 633, 679, and 1293). Chips & Co. also claims to have appeared (Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 1286). 46. ​Joe LoRe’, Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 9. 47. ​Landers, Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 1293. See also Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 679 and 1286. 48. ​David Dutkowski, “personal communication to author,” July 23, 2019. Yahoo Disc-­ O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 266. 49. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 679. 50. ​Dave at http://­manzarek​.t­ hedoors​.c­ om​/­index​.­php​?­showtopic​=­25 (in possession of author); Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 266. Zacherley remembered it this way: “Jim Morrison looked at our weird set and mumbled, ‘This is the damnedest TV show I’ve ever seen.’ ” Quoted in Corey Kilgannon, “Once a Ghoul, Always a Ghoul,” New York Times, October 9, 2012. 51. ​Donna N., Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 889. 52. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 148. 53. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 309. 54. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 100. 55. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 148. 56. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 766. 57. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 492, for allusion to smoking pot for the first time while listening to Sgt. Pepper. 58. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 274 and 299. 59. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 164–165. 60. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 166. 61. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 191 and 618. 62. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 167. 63. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 167. 64. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 499. 65. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 168. 66. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, nos. 337 and 632. 67. ​Yahoo Disc-­O-­Teen Discussion Group, no. 558. 68. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 81. 69. ​Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 120. 70. ​Linda Pace in Scrivani, “Good Night, What­ever You Are!” 81.

160

Notes to Pages 94–102

5. The Upstage Club and the Asbury Park Scene 1. ​See Carrie Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake: Asbury Park’s Upstage Club and Green Mermaid Cafe—­The Untold Stories (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2011), 65. 2. ​Steven Van Zandt quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 111. 3. ​Southside Johnny in Gary Wien, Beyond The Palace (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2003), loc. 322–336, Kindle. 4. ​Potter biographical material from Potter-­Devening, For M ­ usic’s Sake, 6–22. 5. ​Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 22. 6. ​Skip McGarry in Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 336–349. 7. ​Margaret Potter quoted in Susan Etta Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore: A Community of Rock Musicians in Asbury Park, Its Formations and Traditions,” New Jersey Folklife 13 (1988): 39. 8. ​Margaret Potter quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 103. 9. ​Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 20. 10. ​Joe Petillo in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 79. 11. ​Petillo in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 79. 12. ​Albee Tellone in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 83. 13. ​David Mieras quoted in Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 309–322. 14. ​“New Discotheque Operators Feel Young Adults Are Their Business,” Asbury Park Sunday Press, March 10, 1968, 42; printed in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 102. 15. ​Tellone in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 83. 16. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 218–230. 17. ​Robbin Thompson quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 132–133. 18. ​Robbin Thompson in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 45. 19. ​Petillo in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 79. 20. ​Southside Johnny in Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 322–336. 21. ​Tellone in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 89. 22. ​Tellone in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 91. 23. ​Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 91. 24. ​Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 40. 25. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 243–256. 26. ​Billy Ryan quoted in Potter-­Devening, For M ­ usic’s Sake, 148. 27. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 256–269. 28. ​Thompson quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 133. 29. ​Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 41. 30. ​Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 41, 43. 31. ​Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 43. 32. ​Sonny Kenn in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 42. 33. ​Robert Santelli in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 42. 34. ​Carmen quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 110. 35. ​Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 43. 36. ​Gerry Carboy quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 132.



Notes to Pages 102–109

161

37. ​Santelli in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 43. 38. ​Kevin Kavanaugh quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 152. 39. ​Carboy quoted in Potter-­Devening, For M ­ usic’s Sake, 123. 40. ​Potter in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 44. 41. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 256–269. 42. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 256–269. 43. ​Springsteen and Potter quoted in Peter Ames Carlin, Bruce (New York: Touchstone,

2012), 50–51. 44. ​Springsteen quoted in Carlin, Bruce, 51. 45. ​Springsteen quoted in Carlin, Bruce, 51. 46. ​Geoff Potter quoted in Carlin, Bruce, 51–52. 47. ​Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016), 106. 48. ​Sonny Kenn quoted in Carlin, Bruce, 52. 49. ​Jim Fainer quoted in Carlin, Bruce, 52. 50. ​Carlin, Bruce, 53. 51. ​Springsteen, Born to Run, 106. 52. ​Vini Lopez quoted in Carlin, Bruce, 53. 53. ​Margaret Potter quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 117. 54. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 283–296. 55. ​Tony Amato quoted in Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 363–376. 56. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 296–309. 57. ​Billy Ryan quoted in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 147. 58. ​Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 296–309. 59. ​David Mieras quoted in Wien, Beyond The Palace, loc. 309–322. 60. ​Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 94–95. 61. ​Carlin, Bruce, 91. 62. ​Bruce Springsteen, liner notes to Southside Johnny’s a­ lbum I D ­ on’t Want to Go Home. 63. ​Springsteen, liner notes. 64. ​Kevin Kavanaugh quoting Springsteen in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 147. 65. ​Carlin, Bruce, 87. 66. ​Daniel Wolff, 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 34–35. 67. ​See Katrina Martin, “The Asbury Park July 1970 Riots,” June 28, 2016, http://­blogs​ .­library​.d­ uke​.e­ du​/­rubenstein​/­2016​/­06​/­28​/­asbury​-­park​-­july​-­1970​-­riots​/­. 68. ​For an eloquent and insightful account of the riots, their place in Asbury Park history, and their aftermath, see Wolff, 4th of July, Asbury Park, especially 180–190. 69. ​See Daniel Weeks, “From Riot to Revolt: Asbury Park in July 1970,” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2, no. 2 (Summer 2016), https://­njs​.­libraries​.­rutgers​.­edu​ /­index​.­php​/­njs​/­article​/­view​/­49. 70. ​J. T. Bowen quoted in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 45. 71. ​Craig Hansen Werner, A Change Is Gonna Come: ­Music, Race & the Soul of Amer­ic­ a (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 219. 72. ​Springsteen quoted in Werner, Change Is Gonna Come, 220.

162

Notes to Pages 109–115

73. ​David Sancious quoted in Wolff, 4th of July, Asbury Park, 177. 74. ​Sancious quoted in Wolff, 4th of July, Asbury Park, 179–180. 75. ​Wolff, 4th of July, Asbury Park, 192. 76. ​Al Subarsky and Albee Tellone in Potter-­Devening, For M ­ usic’s Sake, 206–207. 77. ​Carboy in Potter-­Devening, For M ­ usic’s Sake, 208. 78. ​Jim Fanier in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 213. 79. ​Bobby Williams in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 45. 80. ​Petillo in Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 202. 81. ​Potter-­Devening, For ­Music’s Sake, 224. 82. ​Sonny Kenn in Keller, “Jamming on the Jersey Shore,” 48.

6. “Drums Along the Hudson” 1. ​Melissa Pierson, The

Place You Love Is Gone: Pro­gress Hits Home (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 70. 2. ​Pierson, Place You Love Is Gone, 74. 3. ​John Holl, “Hoboken in the ’70s: Stayin’ Alive,” New York Times, February 25, 2007, http://­www​.­nytimes​.c­ om​/­2007​/­02​/­25​/­nyregion​/­nyregionspecial2​/­25njpix​.­html. 4. ​Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Under­ ground, 1981–1991 (Boston: ­Little, Brown, 2001), 3. 5. ​Steve Fallon quoted in Craig Marks, “The Hoboken Sound: An Oral History of Maxwell’s,” Vulture, July 22, 2013, https://­www​.­vulture​.c­ om​/­2013​/­07​/­hoboken​-­sound​-­an​-­oral​ -­history​-o­ f​-­maxwells​.­html. 6. ​Jim Testa, “Author Jesse Jarnouw on Baseball, Hoboken History, and the Rise of Indie Rock at Hoboken Museum Pre­sen­ta­tion,” Jersey Journal, December 7, 2012, http://­www​ .­nj​.­com​/­hobokennow​/­index​.s­ sf​/­2012​/­12​/­author​_­jesse​_­jarnow​_­on​_­basebal​.­html. 7. ​Jim Testa, “Alice Genese and Karyn Kuhl Remember Maxwell’s in the Eighties, Say Good-­bye on Saturday,” Jersey Journal, June 27, 2013, http://­www​.­nj​.c­ om​/­hobokennow​ /­index​.­ssf​/­2013​/­06​/­alice​_­genese​_­and​_­karyn​_­kuhl​_­re​.­html. 8. ​Pierson, Place You Love Is Gone, 76. 9. ​Terrence Dopp and Elizabeth Dexheimer, “Maxwell’s Goes Dark as Hoboken Bar Where Nirvana Played Ends Run,” Bloomberg, July 29, 2013, https://­www​.­bloomberg​.­com​ /­news​/­articles​ /­2013​-­0 7​-­30​/­maxwell​-­s​-­goes​-­dark​-­as​-­hoboken​-­bar​-­w here​-­nirvana​ -­played​-e­ nds​-­run. 10. ​Glenn Morrow quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 11. ​Jane Wygal quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 12. ​Richard Barone, “Maxwell’s: When the Club Was the Star,” Spin, July 29, 2013, http://­ www​.­spin​.­com​/­2013​/­07​/­maxwells​-­club​-­closing​-­hoboken​-­richard​-­barone​-­bongos​/­. 13. ​Glenn Morrow quoted in Tris McCall, “Farewell, Maxwell’s: Ending a Chapter in Hoboken’s History, Iconic Rock Club Set to Close This Week,” Inside Jersey, July 28, 2013, http://­www​.­nj​.­com​/­entertainment​/­index​.­ssf​/­2013​/­07​/­farewell​_­maxwells​_­ending​_­a​ _­chapter​_­in​_­hobokens​_­history​_­iconic​_­rock​_­club​_­set​_­to​_­close​_­this​_­week​.­html.



Notes to Pages 115–121

163

14. ​Morrow quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 15. ​Andy Newman, “End for Bar That Altered ­Music Scene, and Hoboken,” New York

Times, June  6, 2013, http://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2013​/­06​/­07​/­nyregion​/­at​-­maxwells​-­a​ -­proving​-g­ round​-f­ or​-­indie​-­music​-­acts​-­awe​-­at​-­a​-­35​-­year​-­run​.­html. 16. ​Collection of Rob Norris. 17. ​­Will Rigby quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 18. ​Barone, “Maxwell’s.” 19. ​Steve Fallon quoted in McCall, “Farewell, Maxwell’s.” 20. ​Ira Kaplan quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 21. ​Karyn Kuhl quoted in Melissa Colangelo, “Karyn Kuhl,” hmag, May 12, 2014, http://­ hmag​.c­ om​/­736​/­. 22. ​Mac McCaughan quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 23. ​Jim DeRogatis, “R.I.P. Maxwell’s: Requiem for a Rock Club,” WBEZ​.­org, June 4, 2013, https://­www​.­wbez​.­org​/­shows​/­jim​-­derogatis​/­rip​-­maxwells​-­requiem​-­for​-­a​-­rock​-­club​ /­54596e49​-­42ac​-­468d​-­9e4b​-­f1f0be11fb90. 24. ​The Bongos, Drums Along the Hudson, (orig. PVC, 1982) Jem Recordings, MVD6181A, CD, 2014. Liner notes by Matt Pinfield. 25. ​“The Bongos,” Trouser Press, http://­www​.t­ rouserpress​.­com​/­entry​.­php​?­a​=­bongos. 26. ​Robert Palmer, “Rock: Richard Barone,” New York Times, December 16, 1987, http://­ www​.n­ ytimes​.­com​/­1987​/­12​/­16​/­arts​/­rock​-r­ ichard​-b­ arone​.­html. 27. ​Jim Beckerman, “Maxwell’s Goes, and with It an Era of ­Music in Hoboken,” Northjersey​.­com, July  8, 2013, accessed July  18, 2016, http://­archive​.­northjersey​.­com​/­arts​-­and​ -­entertainment​/­music​/­maxwell​-­s​-­goes​-­and​-­w ith​-­it​-­an​-­era​-­of​-­music​-­in​-­hoboken​-­1​ .­640354​?­page​=­all. 28. ​Ira A. Robbins, ed., Rolling Stone Review 1985 (New York: Scribner, 1985), 89. https://­ books​.­google​.­com​/­books​?­id​=­3g0wAQAAIAAJ&q​=­%22the+cucumbers%22+%22rolli ng+stone%22&dq​=­%22the+cucumbers%22+%22rolling+stone%22&hl​=­en&sa​=­X&ei​ =­Qny​_­Utf EKIOvsQTpp4GgDQ&ved​=­0CEcQ6AEwBQ. 29. ​Robert Christgau, Consumer Guide Reviews, http://­robertchristgau​.c­ om​/­get​_­artist​ .­php​?­name​=­cucumbers. 30. ​Jon Pareles, “Pop: The Cucumbers, Group from Hoboken,” New York Times, December  30, 1987, http://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­1987​/­12​/­30​/­arts​/­pop​-­the​-­cucumbers​-­group​ -­from​-­hoboken​.­html. 31. ​Bill Million quoted in Nate Rogers, “An Indirectly Direct History of The Feelies,” Flood Magazine, July  5, 2016, http://­floodmagazine​.­com​/­37580​/­tomorrow​-­today​-­an​ -­indirectly​-d­ irect​-­history​-­of​-­the​-­feelies​/­. 32. ​Glenn Mercer quoted in Rogers, “Indirectly Direct History.” 33. ​Glenn Mercer quoted in Brad Cohen, “The World Is Still Catching Up to the Genius Indie Rock The Feelies Ignited,” Observer, July 18, 2016, http://­observer​.­com​/­2016​/­07​/­the​ -­world​-­is​-s­ till​-c­ atching​-­up​-­to​-­the​-­genius​-­indie​-­rock​-­the​-f­ eelies​-­ignited​/­. 34. ​Mercer quoted in Cohen, “World Is Still Catching Up.” 35. ​Jim Testa, “Maxwell’s: Jim Testa Says Good-­Bye,” Jersey Beat (ca. August 2013), http://­ www​.­jerseybeat​.­com​/­maxwells​-­bye​.­html.

164

Notes to Pages 122–127

36. ​Mary Marcus in “Bar/None’s First Intern (1986),” Bar None 30th Anniversary blog,

April 10, 2016, https://­barnoneturns30​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2016​/­04​/­barnones​-­first​-­intern​ -­1986​_­10​.­html. 37. ​Kate Jacobs, Bar None 30th Anniversary blog, April 8, 2016, https://­barnoneturns30​ .­blogspot​.c­ om​/­2016​/­04​/­kate​-­jacobs​-c­ alm​-c­ omes​-­after​-­1993​-­kate​.­html. 38. ​Glenn Morrow in “Bar/None’s First Intern (1986).” 39. ​For a fond remembrance, see http://­hiptran​.­typepad​.­com​/­blog​/­2009​/­02​/­pier​ -­platters​.­html. 40. ​Jim DeRogatis, “Memories of Playing Maxwell’s: ‘The Bar in “Cheers” for M ­ usic Geeks,’ ” Jersey Journal, July  13, 2013, accessed October  16, 2016, http://­www​.­nj​.­com​ /­hudson​/­index ​.­ssf​/­2013​/­07​/­memories​_­of​_­playing​_­maxwells​_­the​_­bar​_­in​_­cheers​ _­for​_­music​_­geeks​.­html. 41. ​Fallon quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 42. ​Todd Abramson quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 43. ​Joel Rose, “Maxwell’s, the Beloved New Jersey Venue, Closes,” NPR, July 30, 2013, http://­www​.n­ pr​.o­ rg​/­templates​/­transcript​/­transcript​.­php​?­storyId​=­206669495. 44. ​Chris Rotolo, “Interview: Richard Barone (The Bongos) Reflects on Maxwell’s and the Birth of a Hoboken ­Music Scene,” Speak into My Goodeye, June 10, 2013, http://­ speakimge​.­com​/­interview​-­richard​-­barone​-­the​-­bongos​-­reflects​-­on​-­maxwells​-­and​-­the​ -­birth​-o­ f​-­a-​ ­hoboken​-­music​-­scene​/­. 45. ​Bob Mould, See a ­Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody (New York: ­Little, Brown, 2011), 94. 46. ​Richard Barone, Frontman: Surviving the Rock Star Myth (New York: Backbeat Books, 2007), 59. 47. ​Fallon quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 48. ​Barone quoted in Marks, “Hoboken Sound.” 49. ​Testa, “Alice Genese and Karyn Kuhl.” 50. ​Testa, “Alice Genese and Karyn Kuhl.” 51. ​Alice Genese quoted in Jesse Sposato, “An Ode to Maxwell’s,” Rumpus, July 30, 2014, http://­therumpus​.­net​/­2014​/­07​/­an​-­ode​-­to​-­maxwells/ (accessed October 16, 2016). 52. ​Janet Wygal quoted in Sposato, “Ode to Maxwell’s.” 53. ​Pierson, Place You Love Is Gone, 76. 54. ​Fallon quoted in McCall, “Farewell, Maxwell’s.” 55. ​Todd Abramson quoted in Rose, “Maxwell’s.” 56. ​Steve Fallon quoted in Sposato, “Ode to Maxwell’s.” 57. ​DeRogatis, “R.I.P. Maxwell’s.” 58. ​Gerard Cosloy, “The Place That Ran Contrary To (Almost) E ­ very Negative Rock Club Ste­reo­type: A Fond Farewell To Maxwell’s,” ­Can’t Stop The Bleeding, June 4, 2013, http://­www​.­cantstopthebleeding​.­com​/­the​-­place​-­that​-­ran​-­contrary​-­to​-­almost​-­every​ -­negative​-­rock​-­club​-­stereotype​-­a​-­fond​-­farewell​-­to​-­maxells. 59. ​Ronnie Barrett of the Muffs quoted in Sposato, “Ode to Maxwell’s.” 60. ​Testa, “Maxwell’s.” 61. ​Kapland quoted in Dopp and Dexheimer, “Maxwell’s Goes Dark.”



Notes to Pages 127–131

165

62. ​Paul Major and Peter Holsapple quoted in Sposato, “Ode to Maxwell’s.” 63. ​Peter Prescott quoted in Sposato, “Ode to Maxwell’s.” 64. ​Cosloy, “Place That Ran Contrary.” 65. ​Testa, “Maxwell’s.” 66. ​Jim DeRogatis, “Memories of Playing Maxwell’s.” 67. ​Pierson, Place You Love Is Gone, 77. 68. ​Pierson, Place You Love Is Gone, 103 69. ​Christgau, Consumer Guide Reviews. 70. ​Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes, “My Town,” The Cucumbers (LP), Profile Rec­ords (New York, NY) 1987. Permission to quote “My Town” by the Cucumbers. © & Jon Fried (ASCAP) & Deena Shoshkes (ASCAP), 1987. 71. ​DeRogatis, “Memories of Playing Maxwell’s.” 72. ​Barone, “Maxwell’s.” 73. ​Karyn Kuhl quoted in Testa, “Alice Genese and Karyn Kuhl.” 74. ​Newman, “End for Bar.” 75. ​Pierson, Place You Love Is Gone, 107.

®

Conclusion 1. ​For an insightful academic account, see Andrew Berish, “From the ‘Make-­Believe Ballroom’ to the Meadowbrook Inn: Charlie Barnet and the Promise of the Road,” in Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 73–118. See also Philip M. Read, Memories from the Meadowbrook (Gloucestershire: Fonthill Media, 2014); “The Meadowbrook Proj­ ect,” http://­www​.­meadowbrookproject​.­com​/­about%20the%20meadowbrook​.­htm; “A Who’s Who of Meadowbrook Performers,” http://­www​.­cedargrove​.­k12​.­nj​.­us​/­north​ /­meadowbrook​/­index​.­htm; a student website created for Cedar Grove Centennial (2008), http://­cgcentennial​.­typepad​.­com​/­cedar​_­grove​_­centennial​/­meadowbrook​ -­whos​-­who​.­html; and Greg Hatala, “Glimpse of History: Teens Are All Ears in Cedar Grove,” Star-­Ledger, July 20, 2015, https://­www​.n­ j​.c­ om​/­essex​/­index​.­ssf​/­2015​/­07​/­glimpse​ _­of​_­history​_­teens​_­are​_­all​_­ears​_­in​_­cedar​_­gro​.­html. See the discussion thread on H-­New-­Jersey, “A Few Folks Chime In on the Meadowbrook,” January 29, 2011, http://­h​ -­net​.­msu​.­edu​/­cgi​-­bin​/­logbrowse​.­pl​?­trx​=­v x&list​=­h​-­new​-­jersey&month​=­1101&week​ =­e&msg​=­GYrvj%2B1zeLO5%2B053LDR8uA&user​=­&pw​=­. For the tele­vi­sion series, see the entry “­Music from the Meadowbrook,” in Wesley Hyatt, Short-­Lived Tele­vi­sion Series, 1948–1978: Thirty Years of More Than 1,000 Flops ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 46. 2. ​Alec Wilkinson, “Live from New Jersey: D.I.Y. Dept,” New Yorker, September 26, 2011, https://­www​.­newyorker​.c­ om​/­magazine​/­2011​/­09​/­26​/­live​-f­ rom​-­new​-­jersey. Tammy La Gorce, “­Music Is in the House,” New Jersey Monthly, March 13, 2012, https://­njmonthly​ .­com​/­articles​/­jersey​-­living​/­music​-­is​-­in​-­the​-­house​/­. See “Living Room Concerts: Welcome to Live at Drew’s,” Fuse TV, March 2, 2012, https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​ =­ShLPLLkLBHc. For other house-­concert series, see “Notes from Home House Concert

166

Notes to Pages 131–132

Series in Montclair,” https://­notesfromhomenj​.­com/ and Cabin Concerts out of Hawthorne at http://­cabinconcerts​.­com​/­. 3. ​Christine A. Lutz, “Cabin in the Pines: Albert ­Music Hall and Constructions of a Pine Barrens Musical Tradition,” New Jersey Studies 2, no. 2 (2016), http://­dx​.­doi​.­org​/­10​.­14713​ /­njs​.­v2i2​.­47. See also Michael C. Gabriele, New Jersey Folk Revival ­Music: History & Tradition (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2016), 109–117. And “The Story of Albert ­Music Hall,” https://­www​.­alberthall​.­org​/­history. For more recent accounts of the con­temporary “Saturday night scene” at Albert ­Music Hall, see Fred Goodman, “Lost in the Pines,” New Jersey Monthly, September 13, 2011, https://­njmonthly​.­com​/­articles​/­jersey​-­living​/­lost​-­in​ -­the​-­pines​/;­ and Margo Nash, “ ‘Piney’ Tunes: It’s the M ­ usic of Old New Jersey,” New York Times, March 10, 2002, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2002​/­03​/­10​/­nyregion​/­piney​ -­tunes​-­it​-­s​-­the​-­music​-­of​-­old​-­jersey​.­html. 4. ​See http://­www​.­njfolkfest​.­org​/­. 5. ​For a fascinating account of a man who books cover bands of the Jersey Shore, see A. D. Amorosi, “Cultivating the Cover Band Sound at the Jersey Shore,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 2015, http://­www​.­philly​.c­ om​/­philly​/­living​/­travel​/­shoreguide​/­20150710​ _­Cultivating​_­the​_­cover​_­band​_­sound​_­at​_­the​_­Jersey​_­Shore​.­html. 6. ​Barbara J. Kukla, Swing City: Newark Nightlife, 1925–50 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Kukla, Amer­i­ca’s ­Music: Jazz in Newark (West Orange, NJ: Swing City Press, 2014); and Kukla, The Encyclopedia of Newark Jazz: A C ­ entury of G ­ reat ­Music (West Orange, NJ: Swing City Press, 2017). See also Tammy La Gorce, “How Newark Became One of the Greatest Jazz Cities in the World,” The Guardian, November 11, 2016, https://­www​.­theguardian​.­com​/­music​/­2016​/­nov​/­11​/­newark​-­new​-­jersey​-­jazz​-­institute​ -­njpac​-c­ lements​-­place. 7. ​Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico, “No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens” (Morrisville, PA: DiWulf Publishing, 2014). “Riot on the Dance Floor: The Story of Randy Now and City Gardens,” directed by Steve Tozzi (Playfort Productions, 2014). 8. ​See http://­w ww2​.­scc​.­r utgers​.­edu​/­ead​/­snjc​/­nbmsaf​.­html; and https://­nbmusic​ scenearchive​.­tumblr​.­com​/.­ See Christine  A. Lutz, “Listening to the Local Beat: New Archive Documents New Brunswick ­Music Scene During Recent De­cades,” Mid-­ Atlantic Archivist 45, no. 3 (Summer 2016), https://­marac​.­memberclicks​.­net​/­assets​/­maa​ /­maracsummer16​.p­ df; and Maddie Orton, “New Brunswick ­Music Scene Takes Its Place in History,” NJTV News, February 12, 2016, https://­www​.­njtvonline​.­org​/­news​/­v ideo​ /­new​-­brunswick​-­music​-­scene​-­takes​-­its​-­place​-­in​-­history​/­. Ronen Kaufman, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goodbye: Bands, Dirty Basements, and the Search for Self (Van Nuys, CA: Hopeless Rec­ords, 2007) offers a vivid first-­person account. See also Bob Makin, “New Brunswick Rock Bands, Driven Under­ground, Thrive in Basement Scene,” NJArts​.­net, April 20, 2017, https://­www​.­njarts​.­net​/­pop​-­rock​/­new​-­brunswick​-­rock​-­bands​-­driven​ -­underground​-­thrive​-­basement​-­scene​/­; and Sarah Beth Kaye, “New Brunswick Basements Ranked #4 Place to See Indie Bands in NJ,” New Brunswick ­Today, September 3, 2014, http://­newbrunswicktoday​.­com​/­article​/­new​-­brunswick​-­basements​-­ranked​-­4​ -­place​-­see​-­indie​-­bands​-­nj.



Notes to Pages 132–135

167

9. ​See http://­v lhfilms​.­com​/­blog​/­new​-­brunswick​-­music​-­scene​-­documentary​/­; and Andrew Sacher, “New Brunswick M ­ usic Scene Subject of New Documentary,” Brooklyn Vegan, April 24, 2017, http://­www​.­brooklynvegan​.­com​/­new​-­brunswick​-­music​-­scene​ -­subject​-­of​-­new​-­documentary​-­watch​-­a-​ ­new​-­trailer​/­. 10. ​Bob Cannon, “Montclair’s Flemtones Celebrate 30 Years at Tierney’s,” Montclair Times, February 23, 1986, https://­www​.­northjersey​.­com​/­story​/­news​/­essex​/­montclair​ /­2016​/­02​/­23​/­montclairs​-­flemtones​-­celebrate​-­30​-­years​-­at​-­tierneys​/­94509020​/­. 11. ​See http://­www​.­outpostintheburbs​.­org​/­. 12. ​“A Seat in the House: Outpost in the Burbs,” Wired Jersey (2015), http://­wiredjersey​ .­com​/­a-​ s­ eat​-­in​-­the​-­house​-­outpost​-­in​-­the​-­burbs​/­. 13. ​See https://­www​.­montclairjazzfestival​.o ­ rg​/­; and https://­jazzhousekids​.­org​/­. For a brief history of previous jazz festivals in Montclair, see Catherine Baxter, “Jazz Festivals of Montclair,” Montclair Dispatch, June 11, 2015, https://­montclairdispatch​.­com​/­jazz​ -­festivals​-o­ f​-m ­ ontclair​/­. 14. ​Catherine Baxter, “DLV Lounge: Montclair’s Hidden Gem,” Montclair Dispatch, October  30, 2014, https://­montclairdispatch​.­com​/­dlv​-­lounge​/­; and https://­montcl​ aircenter​.c­ om​/­dining​/­nightlife​/­dlv​-­lounge​/­. 15. ​See http://­montclairmakesmusic​.­org​/­. 16. ​See http://­www​.­makemusicday​.o ­ rg​/­. 17. ​Colin Moynihan, “For $1, a Collective Mixing Art and Radical Politics Turns Itself into Its Own Landlord,” New York Times, July 4, 2006, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2006​ /­07​/­04​/­nyregion​/­04abc​.­html. For more on ABC No Rio, see http://­www​.­abcnorio​.­org​ /­about​/­about​.­html; Alan W. Moore, “ABC No Rio as an Anarchist Space,” in Tom Goyens, ed., Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab’s Saloon to Occupy Wall Street (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2017); Elie, “De­mo­li­tion of ABC No Rio’s Former HQ Commences on Rivington Street,” Bowery Boogie, March 8, 2017, https://­ www​.­boweryboogie​.­com​/­2017​/­03​/­demolition​-­abc​-­no​-­r ios​-­former​-­hq​-­commences​ -­rivington​-­street​/­; James Timarco, “ABC No Rio,” Brooklyn Rail, February  6, 2008, https://­brooklynrail​.o­ rg​/­2008​/­02​/­local​/­abc​-­no​-r­ io; and Colin Moynihan, “ABC No Rio Gears Up for a Razing and a Brand-­New Home,” New York Times, May 16, 2016, https://­ www​.n­ ytimes​.c­ om​/­2016​/­05​/­17​/­arts​/­design​/­abc​-­no​-r­ io​-­building​-­to​-­be​-­razed​.­html. 18. ​For local coverage, see Vicki Hyman, “Who Is Carl Lentz, the N.J. Pastor ­behind Justin Bieber, Kyrie Irving Controversies?” NJ​.­Com, July  26, 2017, https://­www​.­nj​.­com​ /­entertainment​/­celebrities​/­index​.­ssf​/­2017​/­07​/­w ho​_­is​_­carl​_­lentz​_­the​_­nj​_­pastor​ _­behind​_­justin​_­bieb​.­html; Michael Sol Warren, “Meet Carl Lentz, N.J.’s Celeb Pastor Changing the Way We Think about Faith,” NJ​.­Com, December 17, 2017, https://­www​.­nj​ .­com​/­entertainment​/­index​.­ssf​/­2017​/­12​/­bieber​_­irving​_­and​_­montclair​_­meet​_­pastor​ _­carl​_­lentz​.­html; and Joshua Jongsma, “Montclair a Popu­lar Destination for Justin Bieber,” NorthJersey​.c­ om, June 30, 2017, https://­www​.­northjersey​.­com​/­story​/­news​/­essex​ /­montclair​/­2017​/­06​/­30​/­montclair​-­popular​-­destination​-­justin​-­bieber​/­442972001​/­. 19. ​Linda Moss, “Montclair Arts Groups Discuss Forming Alliance,” Montclair Local, May 18, 2017, http://­www​.­montclairlocal​.­news​/­w p​/­index​.­php​/­2017​/­05​/­18​/­montclair​ -­arts​-­groups​-­discuss​-­forming​-­alliance​/­.

168

Notes to Pages 135–138

20. ​“HANDS Introduces the New Hat City, Get Ready!” July 28, 2017, https://­handsinc​ .­org​/­hands​-­introduces​-­the​-n­ ew​-­hat​-­city​-g­ et​-­ready​/­. See https://­www​.­hatcitynj​.­com​/­; David M. Halbfinger, “Cajun-­Spiced Food, in a Nonprofit Setting,” New York Times, January 14, 2011, https://­www​.n­ ytimes​.c­ om​/­2011​/­01​/­16​/­nyregion​/­16dinenj​.­html; Patricia Rogers, “The Next Chapter of Hat City Kitchen,” Jersey Indie (n.d. ca. 2017), http://­www​ .­jerseyindie​.­com​/­the​-­next​-c­ hapter​-o­ f​-­hat​-c­ ity​-­kitchen​/­; and Donny Levit, “Revamped Hat City in Orange ­Will Feature New Vibe, Menu and ­Music,” Village Green, October 18, 2017, https://­villagegreennj​.c­ om​/­arts​/­revamped​-­hat​-c­ ity​-­orange​-­will​-­feature​-­new​-­vibe​ -­menu​-m ­ usic​/­. 21. ​Kevin Kiley, “Franklin Tavern Jam Celebrates One Year Anniversary,” July 5, 2006, https://­groups​.­google​.­com​/­forum​/­#!topic​/­bit​.­listserv​.­blues​-­l​/­umCLCurCQcc; and Nik Rael, “Real Blues at the Franklin Tavern,” Jersey Tomato Press, July 23, 2009, http://­ thejerseytomatopress​.­com​/­stories​/­Real​-B ­ lues​-­at​-­the​-F ­ ranklin​-­Tavern,1322. 22. ​Bob Cannon, “A Place Where the Kids Are Alright,” Montclair Times, August 6, 2015, http://­tulavera​.­com​/­images​/­20150806montclairtimes​.­pdf. 23. ​Nick quoted in “­Don’t Hang on the Pipes: 30 Years of Legacy at the Meatlocker,” May 16, 2017, Head Walk, http://­www​.­theheadwalk​.­com​/­2017​/­05​/­16​/­dont​-­hang​-­pipes​ -­30​-­years​-­legacy​-­meatlocker​/­. 24. ​Peter August, personal communication to author, June 16, 2017. 25. ​Peter August, personal communication to author. 26. ​Steve from Tru quoted in “­Don’t Hang on the Pipes.” 27. ​Nicole quoted in “­Don’t Hang on the Pipes.” 28. ​Peter August, personal communication to author. 29. ​Peter August, personal communication to author.

INDEX

Italic page numbers indicate illustrations. “a” (band), 115–116, 130 A&M Rec­ords, 121 Abramson, Todd, 123, 125, 127, 130 advertising, for phonographs: by Edison, 34; by Victor, 10, 36, 45, 46, 49, 51; ­women in, 48, 49 aesthetics: and identity, 4–5, 8; of musical equipment, 62–63; of m ­ usic scenes, 2; shared, as po­liti­cal phenomenon, 9–10 African American(s): in Asbury Park, 108–109; on Disc-­O-­Teen, 90; in Newark, 90 African American musicians: segregation of, 56, 109–110; Springsteen on, 109; at Upstage Club, 109–110; Victor recordings of, 50, 55–56 Albert ­Music Hall, 131 alcohol, at Upstage Club, 96–97 Aldridge, B. L., 149n13 Allman ­Brothers, 108 amateur musicians: in domestic scene, 47–48; at Upstage Club, 100 Amato, Tony, 105 American Bandstand (TV show), 81–82, 83, 85 ­ usic, 55 American roots m Ampex, 63 Animal Blood, 138 artists: recording, musicians as, 10–11, 31, 41; Van Gelder as, 66–67, 70, 80 Asbury Park (NJ): ­music scene of 1960s in, 93–94; ­music scene of 1970s in, 111; racial segregation in, 108–109; riots of 1970 in, 108–109, 110; Stone Pony in, 11, 93. See also Upstage Club Asbury Park Press (newspaper), 96–97 Ascots, 87–88 Athens (GA), 122 Atlee, John Y., 37

Attali, Jacques, 15, 40 Audio (magazine), 70 August, Peter, 136–137, 138 Auriemma, Gina, 133 Azerrad, Michael, 114 Bag’s Groove (Davis), 76 “Bag’s Groove” ( Jackson), 75 Barnet, Charlie, 131 Bar/None Rec­ords, 121–122, 123 Barnum, P. T., 48 Barone, Richard, 115, 116, 123, 124, 130 Barraud, Francis, 40 Barzun, Jacques, 47 Batchelor, Charles, 19 ­Battles of the Bands, on Disc-­O-­Teen, 83, 88 Bauer, Harold, 32 Beach Boys, 88 Beatles: Beatlemania over, 81, 93, 94; revolutionary influence of, 81; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 90 beauty, musical, 9–10. See also aesthetics bebop, 59–60 Beck, James B., 17 Becker, Howard, 5, 7, 59 Becker, Walter, 68 Bell, Alexander Graham, 36–37 “Bemsha Swing” (Monk), 75 Berliner, Emile, 10, 38–41 Bernays, Edward, 43–44 Bieber, Justin, 135 Birmingham School, 2–3 Bishop, William H., 146n29 Blacking, John, 2 black ­music, segregation of, 56, 109–110. See also African American musicians Black Panthers, 96 Blakey, Art, 65, 68

169

170

Index

Blasters, 131 Blood, Sweat and Tears, 88 Bloomfield Ave Cafe (Montclair), 137 Blue Note Rec­ords, 64–65, 68, 70–71 Blue Note Sound, 66, 70, 79 Blues Magoos, 88 blues ­music: origins of, 55; at Upstage Club, 100 Blues Proj­ect, 88 Boehme, George, 22 Boheme, La (Puccini), 43 Bongos, 115, 116, 118–119, 119, 130 Bourdieu, Pierre, 7 Bowen, J. T., 109 Bradley, James A., 108 Brady, Matthew, 18 Bridges, Frank, 132 Bristol Sessions of 1927, 55–56 Britain, punk rock in, 113, 114 Brody, Richard, 66, 67 Brown, Charles, 19 Bruce Springsteen Band, 104, 111 Buck, Peter, 122 Buddah Rec­ords, 88 Building No. 15 recording studio (Camden), 40, 44–45, 50, 53, 54 Bülow, Hans von, 18–19, 28–29, 146n43 Burt, Fred C., 25 Bush, Kate, 8 Camden (NJ): Building No. 15 recording studio in, 40, 44–45, 50, 53, 54; Johnson’s machine shop in, 39–40. See also Victor Talking Machine Com­pany Capitol Theatre (Passaic), 132 Carboy, Gerry, 102 Carine, Ed, 136 Carlin, Peter, 104 Carson, Fiddlin’ John, 55 ­ amily, 55–56 Car­ter F Caruso, Enrico, 41–45, 55, 57, 150nn25–26 Case, Anna, 22–23, 25, 31 Cash, Johnny, 56 CBGB (New York), 112, 113, 128 CCCS. See Centre for Con­temporary Cultural Studies

celebrity, culture of, 31–32, 33–34, 55 Centre for Con­temporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), 2 chamber m ­ usic, 47–48 Chaney, Lon, 82 Chicago World’s Fair, 37 Child (band), 104 Child, Calvin, 45 Child, C. G., 40 Chiller Theatre (TV show), 82 Chinen, Nate, 67, 71–72 Christgau, Robert, 120, 129 Christian, Charlie, 60 Christmas Eve session at Van Gelder Studio, 72–76 City Gardens (Trenton), 132 Clark, Alfred, 40 Clark, Dick, 82 Clark, William, 69 Clarke, Kenny, 60, 69, 72, 74, 76 Clash Bar (Clifton), 135 Clemons, Clarence, 109 Cleveland (OH), punk rock in, 112 Clifton (NJ), 135 clothes, on Disc-­O-­Teen, 86 Cogan, Jim, 69 Cohan, George M., 44 Cohen, Sara, 141n7 coin-­operated phonographs, 18, 20, 21, 37 college radio, 118, 122 Collins, Judy, 133 Coltrane, John, 71, 79 Columbia Phonograph Com­pany, 37 Columbia Rec­ords, 39, 55, 65 Columbia Street Studio (West Orange), 20–27, 25, 28 commercialization: of fandom, 48; of recorded m ­ usic, 41; rise of, 38; in thinking about scenes, 2 communities, musical, 5; definition of, 157n10; development of, 5; Disc-­O-­Teen as, 84–87; in language of scenes, 2; sense of difference in, 9–10. See also fan communities consumption: culture of, 35, 37; vs. production, of ­music, 40–41, 46

Convention Hall (Asbury Park), 94 Cooperstein, Eddie, 92 copyright law, 41 corporate image, of Victor, 45–47 corporatization, of rock m ­ usic, 112 Cosley, Gerard, 127 cost of living, in Hoboken, 115, 116, 129–130 counterculture, 95–98 country ­music, origins of, 54–56 Coyote Rec­ords, 120–121 “Crazy Blues” (Smith), 55 Crazy Rhythms (Feelies), 120 creativity: in scenes, 2–7, 59; Upstage Club as incubator of, 94, 96, 98 Creativity Caravan (Montclair), 133 Critters, 88 Cros, Charles, 14 Cucumbers, 119–120, 129 cult bands, 120 cultural studies, 2–3 “cultural under­ground railroad,” 12, 114 culture: of celebrity, 31–32, 33–34, 55; consumer, 35, 37; of production vs. consumption, 37; shift from Victorian to modern, 37–38 curfew laws, 98 Cuscana, Michael, 68–69, 73 cylinders, phonograph, 18, 20–24, 37–38, 41 Daily Journal (newspaper), 108 Dalhart, Vernon, 50 dance shows, teen, 81–82. See also American Bandstand; Disc-­O-­Teen Davis, Miles, Van Gelder’s recordings of, 59, 71, 72–76, 73 Day, Timothy, 146nn42–43 dB’s, 116 deafness, of Edison, 27–29 “Debutante, The” (song), 23 Decca Rec­ords, 65 DeCerteau, Michel, 7 DeGogorza, Victor, 45 DeGraaf, Leonard, 33 democ­ratization, of opera, 43–44, 46–47 DeRogatis, Jim, 123, 125–127, 128, 130

Index 171 Dethlefson, Ronald, 147n49 Detroit (MI), punk rock in, 112 DeVeaux, Scott, 60 Dickson, W. K. L., 19 DiLodovico, Steven, No Slam Dancing, 132 Dirt Club, 131 Disc-­O-­Teen (tele­vi­sion show), 11, 81–92; bands appearing on, 87–89; ­Battles of the Bands on, 83, 88; community created by, 84–87; end of, 90–92; ethnic diversity of, 90; girl dancers on, 85–86, 87; host of, 11, 81–83, 91, 92; location of, 83; m ­ usic se­lection for, 83; origins of, 83; premier of, 81–82, 83; regular dancers on, 84–87, 90–91; riots of 1967 and, 89–90; themed shows of, 88, 158n43; V sign on, 86–87 discs: gramophone, 10, 38–40, 41; phonograph, 24, 26, 42 Division East (Montclair), 138 DLV Lounge (Montclair), 134 Dobrian, Ana, 137, 138 “Doctor Zoom and the Sonic Boom” (Springsteen), 108 domestic scene: amateur musicians in, 47–48; Edison’s phonographs in, 26, 26, 38; h­ ouse concerts in, 131; Victrola in, ­ omen in, 48–50 47–50, 49, 51, 56–58; w “­Don’t Let the Rain Fall Down on Me” (Critters), 88 Doors, 89, 159n45, 159n50 Dorsey, Tommy, 131 DOT. See Disc-­O-­Teen Doughboys, 87, 88 Downtown Tangiers Band, 103 drug use, at Upstage Club, 96–97 drums: at Upstage Club, 101; in Van Gelder’s recordings, 67, 68–70, 69, 74 Drums Along the Hudson (Bongos), 118 Duranoid Com­pany, 39 Dylan, Bob, 81 East Side Mags (Montclair), 133 Easybeats, 88 Eckmann, Drew, 131 economy, of Hoboken, 113 Edison, Theodore M., 147n49, 147n67

172

Index

Edison, Thomas, 10, 13–35; on business use of phonograph, 14, 17, 19–20; coin-­ operated machines of, 18, 20, 21; Columbia Street Studio of, 20–27; competitors of, 18, 23–24, 31, 36–37; and culture of celebrity, 31–32, 33–34; cylinder production by, 18, 20–24; deafness of, 27–29; early ideas for uses for phonograph, 14–15; experimental method of, 21, 24; first ­music recorded by, 17, 18–19; first words recorded by, 13, 14; horns as recording equipment for, 21–24, 28; invention of phonograph by, 10, 13–14; love of ­music, 27; marketplace failures of, 26, 34–35; misunderstanding of sound waves, 27, 147n68; musical tastes of public vs., 27, 29–35; pause in work on phonograph, 18, 36; “perfected” phonograph of, 18, 19, 20, 38; photos of, 18, 19; press coverage of, 15–16; publicity tour of, 15–18; quality of sound produced by, 24–26; Tone Tests of, 25–26; visitors’ impressions of, 16–17; as Wizard, 13, 16–17 Ed ­Sullivan Show (TV show), 81 Electric Eels, 112 Ellison, Ralph, 60 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 16 ­England, punk rock in, 113, 114 Englewood Cliffs (NJ). See Van Gelder Studio Escovedo, Alejandro, 131 E Street Band, 104, 107 ethnic diversity, of Disc-­O-­Teen, 90 Eugene Chrysler Band, 133 ­Every ­Mother’s Son, 91 Fabulous Flemtones, 132 Fallon, Steve, 114–130, 124; as band man­ag­er, 125; Coyote Rec­ords of, 120–121; on Cucumbers, 120; early bands booked by, 115–116; in establishment of Maxwell’s, 114, 116, 129; and gay musicians, 123–124; relationship with other local scenes, 122–123; sale of Maxwell’s by, 130; treatment of musicians by, 123–127; and ­women musicians, 125

fan communities: commercialization of, 48; in language of scenes, 2; before recorded ­music, 48; review of scholarship on, 7–8; in scene formation, 7–8 Fanier, Jim, 110 Federici, Danny, 104, 105 Feelies, 116, 120–121, 130 Fête de la Musique, 134 Fillmore East (New York), 112 Finnegan, Ruth, 141n7 First Congregational Church (Montclair), 133 Fisk Jubilee Singers, 50 Flanagan, Tommy, 69 Flesch, Carl, 32 folk tradition, rock ­music as, 111 Ford, Henry, 33–34 Foster, Robert, 113 France, Fête de la Musique in, 134 Franklin Tavern (The Oranges), 135 Freedom Riders, 81 Freedy Johnston, 121 Fried, Jon, 119–120 Friedman, Kinky, 131 Frith, Simon, 4–5, 50; Performing Rites, 8, 144n56 Gaisberg, Fred, 37, 38–39, 40, 42, 150n26 Gallagher, Big Danny, 100, 103 garage bands, on Disc-­O-­Teen, 87–88 Gardner, Samuel, 30 Garland, Red, 71 gay musicians, in indie scene, 123–124 Gelatt, Roland, 18, 146nn42–43 General Motors, 34 Genese, Alice, 114–115, 125 gentrification, of Hoboken, 114, 129–130 Giannini, Frank, 116 Giglio, Armand, 77 Gitelman, Lisa, 34 Gitler, Ira, 65, 74–75, 76, 78 Godz, 89 Gordon, Robert, 131 Gouraud, George, 19 Grammys, 61 gramophones: commercial advantages of, 40, 149n13; discs for, 10, 38–40, 41;

invention of, 10, 38–39; motor for, 39; in separation of ­music production and consumption, 40–41. See also Victor Talking Machine Com­pany graphophones, 37 ­Great Notch Inn (­Little Falls), 135 Greene, Herb, 92 Green Mermaid (Upstage Club), 96, 98, 104, 106–107 Griffin, Johnny, 72 Grimes, Henry, 68–69 grunge, 117 guitar: Springsteen’s skills on, 103–106; at Upstage Club, 100, 101 Gut Bank, 124–125, 126 Hackensack (NJ). See Van Gelder Studio “Hackensack” (Monk), 65 HANDS. See Housing and Neighborhood Development Ser­vices Hat City Kitchen (The Oranges), 135 Hauptmann, Moritz, 14 Havens, Ritchie, 133 Hayes, Rutherford, 18 Haynes, Roy, 68–69 Heath, Percy, 72, 74 Helmholz, Hermann von, 27 Henken, David, 77 Herald Square, 88 Hesmondhalgh, David, 142n15, 142n19 Heymann, Richard X., 87–88 hillbilly ­music, 55–56 Hillsong Church, 135 hippie counterculture, 95–98 Hired Hands, 107 Hispanic Americans, in Newark, 90 Hoboken (NJ), 11–12, 112–130; collaboration among bands in, 123; cost of living in, 115, 116, 129–130; decline in 1970s of, 113, 114–115; economy of, 113; gay musicians in, 123–124; gentrification of, 114, 129–130; Hoboken Sound in, 116–117; immigrants in, 113–114; indie labels in, 120–122; local ­music press in, 121; relationship with other local scenes, 122–123; rise of indie ­music in, 113–114;

Index 173 success of bands from, 118–120; ­women musicians in, 123, 124–125. See also Maxwell’s Hoboken Land Building, 121 Hoboken Sound, 116–117 Hodier, André, 75 Hofmann, Josef, 18, 146n42 homes. See domestic scene Horning, Susan Schmidt, 20, 21 horns: inside Victrola, 47; for phonograph recordings, 21–24, 28 horror films, 82 house concert scenes, 131 Housing and Neighborhood Development Ser­vices (HANDS) Inc., 135 Hullabaloo (Asbury Park), 94 ­Human Switchboard, 122 Hunter, Charlie, 133 Hüsker Dü, 122 identity: and aesthetics, 4–5, 8; in Disc-­O-­Teen community, 84–86; m ­ usic in, 4–5, 8–9; in ­music scenes, 2; review of scholarship on, 2–3; sexual, 123–124 ID ­ on’t Want to Go Home (Southside Johnny), 107 immigrants: in Hoboken, 113–114; in Newark, 90 improvisation: in jazz, 68, 80; within ­music scenes, 6–7 Impulse! Rec­ords, 65 Indie Arts Montclair, 133 indie labels, 120–122 indie ­music, 112–130; on college radio, 118, 122; gay musicians in, 123–124; on indie labels, 120–122; on major labels, 118–119; ­music critics on split in, 118–119; rise of, 112–114; ­women in, 123, 124–125. See also Hoboken Individuals (band), 116, 117, 120, 125, 130 Jackson, Milt, 72–75 Jackson, Wanda, 136 Jacobs, Kate, 122 Jagger, Mick, 88 jam sessions: at DLV Lounge, 134; at

174

Index

jam sessions (continued) Franklin Tavern, 135; in jazz, 59–60; at Upstage Club, 96, 98–104, 108 Java Love Coffee Roasting Co. (Montclair), 133 jazz, 59–80; and bebop, 59–60; jam sessions in, 59–60; magnetic tape recordings of, 63–64; in Montclair, 134; place and space in, 5–6; scene making in, 59; Victor recordings of, 50. See also Van Gelder, Rudy Jazz Hounds, 55 Jazz House Kids, 134 Jazz Messengers, 65 Jersey Beat (zine), 119, 121 Jersey Journal (newspaper), 130 Jett, Joan, 136 “John Brown’s Body” (song), 16, 146n29 Johnson, Eldridge, 39–40, 45 Johnson, George Washington, 37 Jones, Ada, 50 Jones, Philly Joe, 71 Kahn, Ashley, 77 Kama Sutra Rec­ords, 88 Kaplan, Ira, 121, 124, 127, 128 Karloff, Boris, 82 Karyn Kuhl Band, 136 Kaufman, Irving, 23 Kavanaugh, Kevin, 102, 105, 108 Keller, Susan Etta, 99, 101–102 Kelley, Robin D. G., 74 Kenn, Sonny, 101, 104, 111 Kennedy, John F., 81 Kiley, Kevin, 135 Kinetoscope, 38 Kipfer, Albert, 22 Kruse, Holly, 141n7 Kuhl, Karyn, 116, 125, 126, 130, 136 Kukla, Barbara J., 132 Ladies Home Journal, 49 Laing, David, 38 Landers, Barry, 83, 85, 86, 90, 92, 159n45 Lathrop, George Parsons, 16–17, 27 Lavette, Bettye, 135

“Light My Fire” (Doors), 89, 159n45 liminal spaces, creation of ­music in, 6 Lind, Jenny, 48 Lion, Alfred, 64, 65, 70–71 listening, as per­for­mance, 8 ­Little Falls (NJ), 135 Live @ Drew’s, 131 London (­England), punk rock in, 113, 114 Lopez, Vini “Mad Dog,” 99, 101, 104, 105 LoRe’, Joe, 89, 91 love songs, functions of, 4–5 Love Supreme, A (Coltrane), 79 Lovin’ Spoonful, 88 Luraschi, John, 105 Lutz, Christine A., 132 Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood Soon (compilation ­album), 121 Lyon, John. See Southside Johnny Macdonough, Harry, 50 Mackenzie, Compton, 44, 45 magnetic tape, 63–64 Maisch, Fred, 44–45 Make ­Music Day, 134 “Man I Love, The” (song), 75 Manzarek, Ray, 89 Maplewood (NJ), 135–136 Marable, George, 134 Marcus, Mary, 121–122 Margaret and the Distractions, 95, 98 marijuana, at Upstage Club, 96–97 mass production, origins of, 38 Mastro, James, 115, 116 Maxwell’s (Hoboken), 11–12, 114–130; apartments above, 115, 127; closure of, 129–130; early bands playing at, 115–117, 117, 120; establishment of, 114, 116; experience of regular customers at, 127–129; Hoboken Sound at, 116–117; location of, 114–115; opening bands at, 127; relationship with other local scenes, 122–123; in rise of indie ­music, 114; sexual identities at, 123–124; sound system of, 116; stage of, 116; treatment of musicians at, 123–127 MC5, 112

McBride, Christian, 134 McCormack, John, 43 McGuinn, Roger, 133 McLean, Jackie, 71 Meatlocker (Montclair), 136–138 mechanical m ­ usic, 32–33 Melba, Nellie, 42, 46 Mellé, Gil, 65 Mercer, Glenn, 120, 121 microphones, Van Gelder’s use of, 63, 66, 67–69 ­middle class, Victor’s appeal to, 11, 43, 46–48, 50, 56 Mieras, David, 97, 106 Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz G ­ iants (Davis), 76 Million Dollar Movie Shock Theater (TV show), 82 Milt Jackson Quartet, 74 Mingus, Charles, 79 “Mister Dieingly Sad” (Critters), 88 Modern Jazz ­Giants, 72–76 Monk, Thelonious, 65, 72–76 Montclair (NJ), 132–138 Montclair Art Museum, 133–134 Montclair Center Stage, 132, 133 Montclair Jazz Festival, 134 Moore, Jerrold Northrop, 150n26 Morrison, Jim, 89, 159n50 Morrow, Glenn, 115–116, 121–122, 123 Mosque Theatre (Newark), 83, 86, 88 Mould, Bob, 122, 123–124 MTV, 118, 120 Mulrenan, John, 99, 106 Murray, Billy, 50 ­music: beauty of, 9–10; functions of, 4–5; in identity, 4–5, 8–9; listening to, as per­for­mance, 8; meaning and significance of, 4–10; public vs. private experiences of, 4–5, 8, 142n19 Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, 18–19 musicians: experiences with gramophone recording, 41; experiences with phonograph recording, 18, 21–24; as recording artists, 10–11, 31, 41

Index 175 musicking, 6 ­music scenes. See scenes ­music videos, 118 ­music worlds, place and space in, 5–6 “My Boyfriend” (Cucumbers), 120 Myers, Marc, 66, 77 “My Town” (Cucumbers), 129–130 National Acad­emy of Sciences, 16, 18 National Endowment for the Arts, 61, 80 National Geographic (magazine), 57 National Phonograph Association, 19 neotribes, 2, 3, 142n15 Neumann condenser microphones, 63 Nevermind (Nirvana), 117 Newark (NJ): minority population of, 90; Mosque Theatre in, 83, 86, 88; riots of 1967 in, 89–90. See also Disc-­O-­Teen New Brunswick (NJ), 96, 132 New ­Faces, New Sounds (Mellé), 65 New Jersey Folk Festival, 131 New York City (NY): Berliner’s studio in, 40; Edison’s studio in, 20; punk rock in, 112–113, 114; Victor studios in, 50 New Yorker (magazine), 66 New York Rocker (magazine), 121, 123 New York Sun (newspaper), 15 New York Times (newspaper), 15, 120, 130 Night at Birdland, A (Blakey), 65 Nipper, 10, 40, 45 Nirvana, 117, 118 Noisy Basements and Bars (documentary), 132 Norris, Rob, 116 No Slam Dancing (Wuelfing and DiLodovico), 132 Notes from Home House Concert Series (Montclair), 133 “Numbers with Wings” (Bongos), 118 O’Brien, Bob, 117 Okeh Rec­ords, 54, 55 120 Minutes (TV show), 118 opening bands, at Maxwell’s, 127 opera: democ­ratization of, 43–44, 46–47; Edison on, 31, 35; Victor recordings of, 41–47, 57

176

Index

Oranges, The (NJ), 135 Orchid Lounge (Asbury Park), 109 Original Dixieland Jass Band, 50 Ott, Fred, 19 Ott, John, 19 Otto Heineman Phonograph Supply Com­pany, 55 Outpost in the Burbs (Montclair), 133 “Over ­There” (Cohan), 44 “Paint It Black” (Rolling Stones), 87–88 Palmer, Robert, 118–119 Paramount Theatre (Asbury Park), 94 Pareles, Jon, 120 Parents Who Rock (PWR), 133–134 Parker, Graham, 131 Pason, Greg, 134–135 Passaic (NJ), 132 patent law, 41 Patti, Adelina, 46 peace movement, 87 Pearson, Duke, 72 Peer, Ralph, 54–56 Peer Supply Com­pany, 55 per­for­mance, listening as, 8 Performing Rites (Frith), 8, 144n56 Petillo, Joe, 96, 110 Philadelphia (PA), Berliner’s studio in, 39 Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, 50 Phonogram (periodical), 19 phonographs, 13–58; coin-­operated, 18, 20, 21, 37; cylinders for, 18, 20–24, 37–38, 41; discs for, 24, 26, 42; Edison’s invention of, 10, 13–14; graphophone as competitor to, 37; home use of, 26, 26, 38, 47–50; improvements to, 18, 38–39; origins of term, 14; production and consumption in gramophones vs., 40–41; revolutionary nature of, 14–15; sound quality produced by, 24–26, 38; and ­women’s plea­sure, 48, 151n54. See also Edison, Thomas; Victor Talking Machine Com­pany piano: in phonograph recordings, 23, 26–29, 31, 38; in Van Gelder’s recordings, 67–68 Pier Platters, 122, 125

Pierson, Melissa, 128–129, 130; The Place You Love Is Gone, 129 Pinfield, Matt, 118 place, in ­music worlds, 5–6 Place You Love Is Gone, The (Pierson), 129 “Pompton Turnpike” (Barnet), 131 Ponselle, Rosa, 23 Porter, Bob, 71 post-­subculture, 2–3 Potter, Geoff, 103 Potter, Margaret, 94–111; band of, 95, 98; on blues, 100; ­career of, 94; gatherings in home of, 94–95; marriage of, 94, 110–111; role in Upstage Club, 98–101; on Springsteen, 103, 104–105. See also Upstage Club Potter, Tom, 94–111; ­career of, 94; gatherings in home of, 94–95; marriages of, 94, 110–111; during riots of 1970, 110; role in Upstage Club, 98; sound system design by, 99–100; vision for Upstage Club, 95–97. See also Upstage Club Potter-­Devening, Carrie, 95 Powers, Horatio Nelson, 15 Prendergast, Tom, 121–122 press coverage: of Hoboken scene, 121; of invention of phonograph, 15–16 Prestige Rec­ords, 64–65, 71–72 Prima, Louis, 131 production: vs. consumption, of m ­ usic, 40–41, 46; culture of, 37; origins of mass, 38 Puccini, La Boheme, 43 Puerto Ricans, in Hoboken, 113–114 punk rock, rise of, 112–114 PWR. See Parents Who Rock Pylon, 122 Race Rec­ords, 55 race riots: of 1967 in Newark, 89–90; of 1970 in Asbury Park, 108–109, 110 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 31 racial diversity, of Disc-­O-­Teen, 90 racial segregation: in Asbury Park, 108–109; in ­music, 56, 109–110 Radcliffe, Bobby, 133

radio: college, 118, 122; in decline of rec­ord sales, 53; Van Gelder’s interest in equipment of, 62 Radio Corporation of Amer­i­ca (RCA), 53, 56, 65, 118 Rage to Live, 116, 121 Ramones, 112–113 Rascals, 88 Rave Magazine, 86 RCA. See Radio Corporation of Amer­ic­ a Reaching Fourth (Tyner), 68–69 recording artists, musicians as, 10–11, 31, 41 recording pro­cess: of Edison, 20–27; electrical, introduction of, 53–54; of Victor, 50–54 recording studios: of Edison, 20–27; of Victor, 40, 44–45, 50, 53, 54. See also Van Gelder Studio rec­ord labels: indie, 120–122; small jazz, 64–65, 70–72. See also specific labels Red Seal Rec­ords, 46–47, 50, 56, 152n59 regional ­music, 55–56 rehearsals, jazz, 71 Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 72 R.E.M., 122 Rent Party (Maplewood), 135–136 Replacements, 122–123 “Rhoda Mendelbaum” (Doughboys), 88 Rigby, ­Will, 116 Ringwood (NJ), 131 Riot Grrrl, 124 Riot on the Dance Floor (documentary), 132 riots. See race riots Rivas, Dan, 137 Robbins, Ira, 123 Robeson, Paul, 50 rock ­music: consolidation and corporatization of, 112; as folk tradition, 111; racial segregation in, 109–110. See also Disc-­O-­Teen; Upstage Club Rod­gers, Jimmy, 55–56 Rolling Stone (magazine), 120 Rolling Stones, 87–88 Rosanoff, M. A., 29, 35 Roslin, Vinnie, 104 Ross, Alex, 145n16, 150n25

Index 177 royalties, 55, 74 Rutgers University, 131, 132 Ruthie’s (Montclair), 132–133 Ryan, Billy, 99–100, 106, 122, 125 Sad About Girls, 136 Sancious, David, 105, 109–110 Santelli, Robert, 101, 102 Saturday Eve­ning Post (magazine), 45, 46 Savoy Rec­ords, 65 Sayles, Fred, 83 scenes, ­music: evolution of, 59; flexibility of concept of, 3–4, 142n15; meaning and use of term, 1–4; review of scholarship on, 2–3; significance of, 4–10; types of participants in, 6, 7, 59; ways of talking and thinking about, 2 scenes perspective, 3 scene thinking, 3 Schneider, Alma, 133–134 Scientific American (magazine), 16 Scott de Martinville, Edouard-­Leon, 14 Scrivani, Richard, 89, 90, 91 Seamon, Frank, 41 Seattle (WA), grunge scene of, 117 73 See Gallery (Montclair), 133 Sex Pistols, 113 sexual identities, in indie scene, 123–124 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Beatles), 90 Shank, Barry, 3, 9–10, 142n15 sheet ­music, 47–48 Shilkret, Nathaniel, 50 Shoshkes, Deena, 119–120 Siefert, Marsha, 47 Sinatra, Frank, 131 Skea, Dan, 66, 68, 72, 73–74 slang, on Disc-­O-­Teen, 86–87 Smith, Mamie, 55 Sooy, Harry O., 40 sound waves, Edison’s misunderstanding of, 27, 147n68 Sousa, John Philip, 32–33, 37 South Orange (NJ), 135–136 Southside Johnny, 103, 105, 106, 107, 109, 111 Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, 107

178

Index

space: in ­music scenes, 6; in ­music worlds, 5–6 Springsteen, Bruce, 103–111; bands of, 104, 107–108, 111; charisma of, 104, 106; guitar skills of, 103–106; and racial integration in m ­ usic, 109; at Stone Pony, 11, 93; tribute to Upstage Club, 107; at Upstage Club, 11, 103–111 “Stars and Stripes Forever” (Sousa), 33 Steel Mill, 104, 108 Steely Dan, 68 Stevens, Ernest, 24, 26–28, 29, 31 Stiff Amer­i­ca Rec­ords, 120 Stinson, Tommy, 123 Stone Pony (Asbury Park), 11, 93 Stooges, 112, 120 Stowkowski, Leopold, 50 Straw, ­Will, 3, 142n15 Stross, Randall, 15 Student Prince (Asbury Park), 94 Students for a Demo­cratic Society, 81 subcultures: of jam sessions, 60; in ­music scenes, 2; review of scholarship on, 2–3 Suicide (band), 112 Suisman, David, 40, 41 SuzyQues BBQ (The Oranges), 135 Sweet Inspirations, 89 “Swing Spring” (Davis), 75 symbols, on Disc-­O-­Teen, 86–87 Symphony Hall (Newark). See Mosque Theatre Tainter, Charles Sumner, 37 Talking Machine World (magazine), 47 taste communities, 2 Taylor, Art, 71 Taylor, Billy, 67–68 teen dance shows, 81–82. See also American Bandstand; Disc-­O-­Teen tele­vi­sion: Beatles on, 81; MTV, 118, 120; teen dance shows on, 81–82; UHF channels of, 83. See also specific shows Tellone, Albee, 96, 97, 98, 107 Terry’s Serendipity Café (Montclair), 136 Testa, Jim, 121, 127–128 Thee Volatiles, 132, 136

­ iants, 121 They Might Be G Thompson, Emily, 25–26 Thompson, Robbin, 97, 98, 100 Tierney’s Tavern (Montclair), 132, 133 Tiger Beat (Bongos), 118 Tone Tests, 25–26 “Topsy” (song), 60 Trend Coffee Shop (Montclair), 133 Trenton (NJ), 132 tribes: in ­music scenes, 2; neo-­, 2, 3, 142n15 Trouser Press (magazine), 118 trumpet, in Van Gelder’s recordings, 73–74 Trumpets Jazz Club (Montclair), 134 Turrentine, Stanley, 78 Tuskegee Institute Singers, 50 Tyler, Bruce, 134 Tyner, McCoy, 68–69, 72 UHF channels, 83 “under­ground railroad, cultural,” 12, 114 Unitarian Church (Montclair), 133 Universal Studios, 82 Upstage Club (Asbury Park), 11, 93–111; alcohol and drug ban at, 96–97; annual dues for, 96; closure of, 108, 110–111; counterculture in, 95–98; decor of, 96, 102; establishment of, 94–97; food served at, 97, 98; inclusiveness at, 100–102; as incubator of creativity, 94, 96, 98; pecking order at, 101; Potter’s vision for, 95–97; racial integration at, 109–110; regular musicians at, 100–104; riots of 1970 and, 108–109, 110; sound system of, 99–100; Springsteen at, 11, 103–111 Urbano, David, 132 Usonian h­ ouses, 77 Van Gelder, Elva, 76–77 Van Gelder, Rudy, 11, 59–80, 64; artistry of, 66–67, 70, 80; awards won by, 61; in Blue Note Sound, 66, 70, 79; childhood of, 61–62; critics of, 79; drums in recordings by, 67, 68–70, 69, 74; experimentation by, 65, 66, 78–79; magnetic tape used by, 63–64; mics used by, 63, 66, 67–69; optometry c­ areer of, 61, 65, 76;

perfectionism of, 62–63; personality of, 78; quality of sound produced by, 61, 64–68, 79; scope of jazz recordings by, 61; secrecy of techniques of, 66, 77, 79 Van Gelder Studio (Englewood Cliffs), 76–77, 78 Van Gelder Studio (Hackensack), 64, 69, 73; atmosphere of, 72; Christmas Eve 1954 session at, 72–76; construction of, 60–61; musicians’ appreciation of, 65–66, 71–72; small jazz labels using, 64–65, 70–72 Van Zandt, Steven, 82, 94, 105 Velvet Under­ground, 112, 115, 120 Victorian era, 37–38, 48 Victor Salon Orchestra, 50 Victor Talking Machine Com­pany, 10–11, 36–58; advertising by, 10, 36, 45, 46, 49, 51; Building No. 15 studio of, 40, 44–45, 50, 53, 54; corporate image of, 45–47; country ­music recordings of, 54–56; in creation of recording artists, 10–11, 31, 41; daily whistles at closing time, 53, 152n64; diversity of ­music of, 50, 54; end of, 53, 56; establishment of, 39–40; as international business, 40; logo of, 40, 45; middle-­class customers of, 11, 43, 46–48, 50, 56; opera recordings of, 41–47, 57; recording pro­cess of, 50–54; Red Seal line of, 46–47, 50, 56, 152n59; technical innovations at, 36 Victrola: home use of, 47–50, 49, 51, 56–58; internal horns of, 47; invention of, 36; marketing of, 10, 36; middle-­class buyers of, 11, 50, 56 videos, ­music, 118 Village Voice (newspaper), 115–116, 120 Village Voice Consumer Guide (Christgau), 120 violin, in phonograph recordings, 23, 29–30, 32, 38 VLH Films, 132 Volta Laboratory, 37 Volta Prize, 36

Index 179 Walker, Melissa, 134 Wangemann, A. Theodore, 19, 22 Warhol, Andy, 112 Weinstock, Bob, 64–65, 71, 72, 74, 76 Wellmont Theater (Montclair), 135 Werner, Craig Hansen, 109 Werner, George, 25 West, Carl “Tinker,” 106 Westerberg, Paul, 123 Western Electric, 54 West Orange (NJ): Columbia Street Studio in, 20–27, 25, 28; Edison’s factory in, 18, 21, 22; Edison’s laboratory in, 10, 18, 34 West Side Community Center (Asbury Park), 109 White, Edna, 23 white flight, 108 white ­music, segregation of, 56, 109–110 White Panther Party, 112 Williams, Bobby, 101, 104, 105, 110 Williams and Walker, 50 WNJU TV-47, 83 Wojcik, Pamela Robertson, 151n54 Wolff, Francis, 70 ­women: as dancers on Disc-­O-­Teen, 85–86, 87; in indie ­music, 123, 124–125; phonograph use by, 48–50, 49, 151n54 Workman, Maya Milenovic, 134 Workman, Reggie, 134 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 76–77 Wuelfing, Amy Yates, No Slam Dancing, 132 Wygal, Janet, 125 Yo La Tendo, 116, 117, 121, 123, 124, 130 Young, Victor, 29, 30–31, 32 “Younger Girl” (Critters), 88 youth culture: in Disc-­O-­Teen, 84; in ­music scenes, 2; review of scholarship on, 2–3 Zacherley ( John Zacherle), 11, 81–83; ­career of, 82–83; death of, 92; in Doors episode, 89, 159n50; in last episode, 91, 92; origins of character, 82

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dewar M ­ acLeod is a professor of history at William Paterson University and

author of Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California. He sings and plays guitar for Thee Volatiles, the greatest punk rock band in Montclair, New Jersey.